


no lover in the past tense

by monopolizers



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, exes who still have feelings for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-07-15 12:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16063160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monopolizers/pseuds/monopolizers
Summary: So it came that Ten had to find a new place to live. At least for two weeks: that was what the landlady said."Doyoung is staying on campus," said Kun. "And he has a single."





	1. Chapter 1

The landlady said, "I told you about this two months ago," and Ten, thinking about all the emails Johnny had probably sent him that he hadn't answered, feeling slightly faint, replied,

"Ah. That's probably... true."

\--

So it came that he had to find a new place to live. At least for two weeks: that was what the landlady said. She had to do inspections, or repairs. Some other useless custom Americans performed that he didn't quite understand. The rent was "prorated," a term Jaehyun told him meant that he paid less. He didn't care about that quite as much; what he cared about was that he needed to find somewhere else, and at the moment he had nowhere else. That was how he found himself here, at the campus coffee shop. With Kun.

"Doyoung is staying on campus," said Kun. "And he has a single." 

Ten stared at him dumbly.

"It's worth asking," said Kun. 

Ten said nothing. The expression on his face probably said it all. Kun was living on campus and already had a roommate, which meant he had no couch to offer Ten; everyone else had subletted for the summer to strangers who did not seem to willing to open a couch to a stranger for a number of weeks. 

"It might be your only option," said Kun finally, and Ten, trying not to throw his hands up in defeat at the only person able to help him at the moment, slumped backwards in the uncomfortable metal chair provided by the coffee shop. 

"We..." Ten started, but he couldn't complete the sentence. "I haven't talked to him in a really long time." Actually, Doyoung had blocked him after they broke up. On everything. And left every party they both ended up at, and didn't even seem to go out anymore in fear of running into Ten. Admittedly that had kind of hurt; Ten didn't consider himself to be such a bad ex. Doyoung was the only person he'd ever dated that he was on bad terms with.

"A year and a half isn't a long time when you have all the same friends and you're constantly creepily checking up on each other," Kun pointed out. He was ruthless, but he was also right. Ten gritted his teeth.

\--

Doyoung's cool stare said it all; after pouring his heart out, Ten didn't have to hear a word to know what Doyoung was thinking. Maybe this was why people said you couldn't stay friends with your exes. He was about to slink away from that icy gaze when Doyoung said, "So you want the extra bed?"

"Yes."

"You don't mind having to stay in a room with me for two weeks." Even though I'm an incurable nag, was the unspoken addition that Ten heard. Doyoung would not have phrased it quite that way, but it was true.

"I don't..." really have any other choice. "I don't mind." It sounded weak even to his own ears. Doyoung looked at him in disgust, but that was nothing new. Actually, that had been something of a mainstay even when they were dating, but at least then it had been tempered by affection or desire. Now it was pure. 

He was getting ready to take his stuff and book an Airbnb in the common room using the campus wifi when Doyoung said, "Fine." For a moment Ten thought he had heard wrong, and his feet started moving before his ears processed what was said. Thus he was stuck in some sort of bizarre diagonal when he'd fully understood that he might have a place to stay without having to pay extra. 

He didn't have to say anything; his dumbstruck expression said it all. 

"Fine," Doyoung repeated, his mouth set in that mutinous pout that Ten still found unbearably attractive. He held the door open, and Ten, without saying a word, wheeled his suitcase in ahead of his confused body, which was trying to process the reality of moving back into the first room on campus where he'd ever had sex. 

\--

Actually, living with Doyoung was easy. He was a good roommate; it was in his nature to be considerate and so even when he awoke at 7 AM every day to prepare for his 8 AM lab days he made sure not to disturb Ten, who worked afternoons and evenings at the dance center and thus slept until 11 AM. At night he didn't use screens, and he went to bed early. Ten, conversely, made an effort to spend as little time in the room as possibly, exactly for the same reason.

"That's what you're telling yourself?" Johnny said over FaceTime. He was two cities away on some paid internship.

"It's true!" Ten said, pouting. 

"I don't know if that's true." Johnny was a wonderful friend and the only person Ten had ever considered marrying despite the unfortunate fact of his (Johnny's) heterosexuality. Despite his good qualities, he had a habit of honesty that Ten had not managed to shake from him. "I think it kinda sounds like you're trying to avoid him because you don't know what to say to him."

That much was true, but Ten didn't want to say it out loud. He had been the one to initiate that fateful breakup a year and a half ago, and he didn't regret it exactly--it had been good for him. He'd needed the emotional space. And the breakup itself hadn't been too emotional; Doyoung hadn't argued with him about it. There were no tears involved. In fact, rather than tears, there had been nothing at all. Ten got blocked on every form of social media and frozen out of Doyoung's social life. For someone who was used to amicable breakups, it was something of a shock. He'd only managed to keep up with Doyoung's life through sheer force of will and a friend group that overlapped for better or for worse. 

"I don't know what to say to him! Is there even anything to say?" Other than the usual niceties, which he and Doyoung were doling out to each other like they were going out of style. The obsequious courtesies were driving him nuts. 

"Maybe a regular conversation about his life?" Johnny suggested, but he was already smiling in anticipation of Ten's answer.

"I can't do that!" Ten exclaimed. "Asking him about..." He trailed off. He didn't even know. Other than Doyoung's biology lab, he didn't seem to do anything else. 

Johnny made a face at him, and Ten made a face back. As much as he hated to admit it... "I think you're probably right," he said slowly. Johnny didn't have to say anything; his smug grin was enough to make Ten hang up on him.

\--

So Ten started making an effort. The first time, it started Doyoung badly enough that he burned himself on the iron he was using on the shirt he was planning to wear the next day. "What did you say?" he said, over the sound of the sink. Ten looked at him, standing there in the same oversized t-shirt and boxers he'd slept in the first time Ten had stayed over two years ago, running water on his burnt finger, and felt a literal twinge in his heart. He wasn't given over to sentimentality, but for the first time he couldn't remember why he'd broken up with Doyoung. 

At the time it had seemed like a very good idea. Doyoung was overbearing; his personality, which could be described as uptight at best and standoffish at worst, had come to wear on Ten's nerves after a good six months of what could only be described in the language of lesbians--a U-Haul period. At the beginning he had found Doyoung charming and lovable; by the end, he felt stifled. He had thought they might be better off as friends and broke it off in that vein, intending for them to carry on some sort of affable relationship. The resulting freeze-out had surprised and then hurt him. Now, watching Doyoung, he felt something he couldn't quite name.

He had been staying with Doyoung for four days, and already he could feel himself changing. It was what had drawn Ten to him in the first place, he thought. He hadn't anticipated it, but maybe he should have. 

Doyoung, sensing eyes on him, bristled in a familiar way. "What?" he demanded, now waving his finger in the air to dry it. Ten didn't laugh, but he thought the expression in his eyes betrayed that he wanted to. Doyoung cast a baleful glance at him, an expression uncomfortably familiar still, and turned away before remembering that Ten had originally asked him a question. "I do experiments on lab rats." His tone was sullen. He'd always been like this; he had trouble with physical pain. Ten's heart filled with an unanticipated fondness hearing that tone of voice again.

"That's cool!" he said. The silence that followed felt empty in a way that indicated both of them were waiting for Doyoung to ask a question, but contrary to his finely tuned sense of social guilt and obligation, he didn't. Instead, he finished ironing his shirt; then, in a ritual that had become familiar over the past half week, he picked out the rest of his clothing and draped it over the back of the chair on his side of the room. He got into bed and lay on his side, the way he always did, with his back turned to Ten. Ten felt it as if it had been shouted at him: a message of distance. He thought he got the idea; maybe he even deserved it. He didn't say anything else. Instead, after fifteen minutes, he shut his laptop, put it on the desk on his side of the room, switched off the overhead light, and lay in bed, wondering if Doyoung was faking the even sound of his breaths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. this is the first fic ive written in over a year  
> 1a. because i got pretty drunk  
> 1b. i am still kinda drunk which is why im posting it  
> 2\. i will finish this!!! i swear!  
> 3\. the title is from drake's nice for what  
> 4\. [cc](https://curiouscat.me/monopolizers) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/_monopolizers)  
> 5\. can you believe "exes who still have feelings for each other" isn't a canonical tag? v sad


	2. Chapter 2

Despite how frozen Doyoung's social courtesies seemed to be, he and Ten fell into a comfortable routine almost immediately. Maybe this was part of the problem; although people who'd had to hang around them complained about how much they argued, it had never been because they didn't get along. They had different personalities, certainly, but at the base of it Ten had always secretly thought they were the same. They had the same drive, the same single-minded obsession, even when they processed and expressed it differently. 

But even beyond all of this, their social and emotional ties, something else made it rather difficult for Ten: proximity. He and Doyoung had started dating right as Doyoung was about to grow out of his gangly teenage boy phase and into manhood; now, he'd fully come into himself. Not even his awkwardness, his austerity of manner, could detract from how handsome he'd become, and Ten had to catch himself more than once when he found himself idly staring at the broad stretch of Doyoung's shoulders leading down to his (admittedly skinny) waist.

One such time, a night when Doyoung stayed up unusually late to prepare for a lab the next day, Ten was caught. He couldn't have stopped himself from staring if he tried; he was only one human being in close physical proximity to someone with whom he'd once been very intimate. At his desk, Doyoung had just raised a long-fingered hand to sweep a shining black mass of hair off his forehead, and Ten, who was sitting in the bed Doyoung had allotted him with his laptop in his lap, looked up to see that fine-boned face creased in concentration. Even Ten, who spent his fair share of time around people who were given more than their fair share of good looks, was not immune to a handsome man with a look of intense focus on his face.

It was at that unlucky moment that Doyoung looked over to see Ten gaping at him openmouthed. "What?" he asked, ever self-conscious. He raised the same hand to his cheek. "Do I have something on my face?"

Ten, caught off-guard, replied with a standard snarky answer: "Only your nose. But seriously, what's up with that thing?" Doyoung's face fell into the familiar lines of irritation, and without answering, he hunched over and turned back to his work, the spell broken. 

\--

The studio where he was teaching over the summer wanted to have a staff dinner, so on Sunday, a week after he'd started living with Doyoung, Ten stumbled back at midnight, drunk off the wine he'd had with dinner and the shots he'd taken at the bar afterward, to find Doyoung lying in bed with the lights off and a drama playing on his laptop. Ten had expected Doyoung to be asleep, so the darkness he stepped into didn't surprise him; the blue light of the laptop screen illuminating Doyoung's pinched face, however, did. He raised a hand in a wave at Doyoung, who only nodded briefly at him before returning his attention to whatever it was he was watching.

This scene felt familiar, somehow. In the most comfortable points of their relationship, it had played itself out many times. Doyoung didn't like to go out all the time; at heart he was a homebody, and American drinking culture was at times so foreign to him that he preferred to stay home. Ten was too extroverted for that, and so this had happened a million times before: Ten pushing his shoes off at the door, shedding his jeans, and sliding into Doyoung's bed to soak in his body heat while Doyoung finished his drama. 

The sense of deja vu was overwhelming. For a moment, Ten almost considered turning around and walking out the door again, pretending he'd only come because he'd wanted a jacket or something else small. But the truth was that the alcohol in his system had made him maudlin, nostalgic for something he couldn't have anymore. He wanted to be close; surrounded by his friends, laughing at something he couldn't remember, all he'd wanted was to be able to come back to Doyoung's room, sit by his side, and watch the play of emotions over his face washed in blue light. 

It was this desire, a yearning for return that ran deeper than words could name, that pushed Ten to shuck his jeans and pad over to the side of Doyoung's bed. Up close, he could see Doyoung's shoulders tense; he should have known Doyoung's nonchalant attitude was a front. Ten himself wasn't feeling tense, just sweetly drunk, with that need for contact humming on his skin. When he patted Doyoung lightly on the arm, he saw those long slender fingers hit the touchpad to watch the drama and then those big eyes turn up to face him. "What?" Doyoung said. He looked like he was on high alert.

It was so obvious, Ten couldn't figure out how he hadn't seen it earlier. Doyoung's previous behaviour, his carefully studied casual attitude towards Ten, his abnormal lack of hostility had all been confusing because Doyoung wasn't capable of being casual. He took everything to heart; he had a high temper and a keen sensitivity to being wronged. When Ten moved in, he'd expected to be frozen out or yelled at, not ignored, and the way Doyoung behaved towards him baffled him. 

Now he understood: it was all an act. Doyoung had never gotten over it in the first place; even if he had managed to be polite to Ten within the confines of the room, that old hurt was there underneath, hidden as deep as Doyoung could shove it for the time being. Ten could see it now, in the delicate way he held his mouth. In how he couldn't quite meet Ten's eyes, in how he was rubbing the pads of his fingers together in a nervous tell he'd never quite conquered. In his short breaths. 

"What?" Doyoung said again, and Ten, drunk on rum and reckless in the memory of old love, said, 

"Move over! Let me sit next to you! I wanna watch!" He could hear the pout in his voice, the tone he'd always used with Doyoung when he was trying to be cute.

Doyoung didn't say anything for a moment. Then: "I'm not watching anything." His voice was unsteady. "I'm going to go to bed." A pause; he collected himself. "You're drunk," he said more calmly. "You should go drink some water. There's some in the mini fridge if you need it." 

Ten could feel his grasp on the situation slipping. "I want to watch with you," he said, pouting again. 

Doyoung couldn't meet his eyes. "Please go drink some water," he said again. He was nearing a point of agitation; Ten could see it, and, fueled by alcohol, he wanted to push Doyoung there. Instead of replying, he pulled back Doyoung's blanket and started to sit. He had barely placed one leg on the bed when a shove pushed him back so far that, caught off balance, he found himself on the floor, staring up at Doyoung's red face.

They stared at each other for a moment, Doyoung with a true anger Ten had never seen before painted on his handsome features. It was replaced quickly with shock and then concern, but uncharacteristically, Doyoung didn't move to help him. Instead he said, after taking a deep breath, "I'm." He couldn't finish the sentence and had to start again. "I'm sorry for doing that," he said with a great effort at calm. His hands were balled into fists. Now more than ever Ten could hear the Korean accent in his speech, the one he'd worked so hard to eradicate when he moved over at fifteen. "Don't invade my... space again. Please." And then, with more desperation, as if he were afraid Ten wouldn't comply, he added, "Drink some water and go to bed. Please." The last plea was spoken with such force Ten was surprised it didn't bodily lift him and place him into his own bed. 

The words dropped like stones into Ten's consciousness. He was still drunk, but even with the alcohol clouding his perception somewhat he sensed that he had crossed some line from which he could not turn. Instead of saying anything else, he got up unsteadily. He crossed the small room over to Doyoung's minifridge, which was next to the bed in which Ten was sleeping. It was near a window, and even through the blinds a streetlight was casting orange light, illuminating the glass he had in his hand. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of Doyoung shutting his laptop and placing it somewhere he wouldn't step on it in the morning. Without changing, he drained the water in the cup and slipped into bed, closing his eyes, not quite ready to face what was going to happen the next morning.

\--

Which, apparently, was nothing.

When he'd awoken, first confused and then filled with the hot mortification of remembrance, Doyoung was gone. Of course: he had a research position that had started in the morning. But even in the early afternoon, when Ten knew he usually returned, he didn't come back. Ten didn't have his number, and even if he did he suspected he'd still be blocked, so it wasn't until late, when he returned from an impromptu session after the classes he taught, that he and Doyoung were face to face again.

Just like the last time, Doyoung was seated against a pillow in his bed, laptop on his outstretched legs. Ten had been filled with guilt all day, but the actual alarm on Doyoung's face made his entire body go hot and cold in a matter of seconds. He could feel himself sweating in anxiety.

But before he could open his mouth to say anything, Doyoung said, in the most stilted voice he could have mustered up, "I need to. Apologize for last night. I freaked out, but I shouldn't have pushed you." It sounded like he'd rehearsed it all day, and for a moment Ten thought about asking him if that were the case. 

He decided to take the path of least rudeness instead. "No, I'm sorry," he said, hoping it sounded genuine. One of his worst traits, one Doyoung had complained about through the course of their relationship, was that he was incapable of saying anything in a sincere manner. Even his compliments sounded like backhanded insults, no matter whether he meant what he said or not. "I'm really sorry. I was drunk, but it's not really an excuse. I shouldn't have been so familiar. I--" He thought about saying more but cut himself off before anything truly stupid came out of his mouth. 

For some reason, he didn't get the feeling that his apology had helped Doyoung any. There was an expression he couldn't quite read on Doyoung's face; it passed as soon as it appeared. For the first time, Ten found himself wondering just how much Doyoung had changed since they broke up. This Doyoung, the one who chose not to rise to any bait, the one who was capable of shoving his feelings down: he wasn't the same one Ten had known.

But as soon as he had the thought, all the tension in Doyoung's body released. "It's fine," he said with a low laugh. "I should have known you didn't mean anything by it." He put his headphones back on; it was a clear dismissal. 

\--

The remark, as offhanded as it was, stuck with Ten. The entire next day went by on autopilot until he tripped trying to show one of his five year olds an elementary stretch. Taeyong laughed at him with absolutely no mercy in class and cornered him outside of class with concern, a classic move pulled by a guy who had absolutely no normal human way to handle his emotions and yet tried his best to carry them anyway. Ten loved him dearly. 

"Is everything okay with your living situation?" Taeyong emitted one of those nervous laughs that seemed to erupt from him whenever he found himself in a social situation he was uncomfortable with (so: all of them). 

Ten, in pity, said, "It's fine. The landlady said it'll be done by the end of the week, not even next week like she thought originally, so..." He trailed off. Until now he hadn't actually given thought to what that might mean for him materially. The landlady had said Saturday, which meant the last night he had to stay with Doyoung was Friday. Today was Tuesday. For some reason the prospect of his freedom seemed not as appealing as it had a week ago. 

Taeyong fidgeted with the string of his hoodie. "That's not what I meant." Ten remembered then that Taeyong and Doyoung were actually friends and RAs in the same residential quad; no wonder he felt so awkward.

"I was..." Ten couldn't bring himself to say it. "Inappropriate with him. It would have been fine if it were anyone else, but I know--" He took a deep breath. "I know Doyoung's boundaries and I still did something to make him uncomfortable. Deliberately." Hearing himself say it out loud like that made him want to crawl into a hole and die.

Instead of getting angry, Taeyong looked thoughtful. "You know," he said slowly. He looked pensive. "You know, I was really surprised when you broke up with him." Ten didn't flinch; the breakup was very old news now, and he really felt he'd paid his dues for it already. Taeyong continued, "I was really surprised by it. Not by the way Doyoung reacted, because I know him. But the way you acted after. And how you're talking about him right now..." He paused again. "You're really different around him. Do you know that?" The question was addressed directly to Ten, but Taeyong didn't seem to need an answer. "I don't get why you broke up with him. And you could have booked an Airbnb for two weeks and lived by yourself but you didn't. Could you just think about this a little bit?" This again was a direct question that Taeyong rushed through. "Could you just... think about it for a while. And really consider why you're like this with him." 

Ten stared at him for a moment, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming. "I'm going to be really honest," he said slowly. "I have no clue what you're trying to tell me."

Taeyong chewed his bottom lip. Contrary to his generally stunning appearance, Taeyong lost in thought wasn't sexy nor even slightly intriguing; he thought in an ugly way, probably because he was least concerned about how he looked then. "You're really different with Doyoung than with anyone else we know," he said finally. "Not just when you were with him. When you're talking about him or even when you just catch him out of the corner of your eye... it's kind of..." He winced. "You seem pretty obsessed with him. We all thought you were going to get over it after you broke up, or maybe we thought you were going to get back together or something, but neither of those things happened. So." 

"What are you trying to actually tell me right now?" 

"You're obsessed with him!" Taeyong burst out. "Go figure that out!" Ten stared at him in shock until he turned red and began packing his stuff, mumbling apologies over his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic has really gained a life of its own and not in a way i intended. i promise the next chapter will be the last!!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realised that the way i was writing this, the original ending id envisioned didnt make any sense... so this is now gonna be four chapters of extremely uneven length (bc i couldnt figure out a good way to cut it). oh well!!!!

So that was... that. 

It wasn't that Ten had never realised how weird he was around Doyoung; he'd just thought it was the normal behaviour of being thwarted in friendship. Normally after a slight cooling off period he was able to get along fairly well with most of the people he broke up with; he never got that sort of closure with Doyoung, who nonetheless remained in the same social circles he did, so it had seemed--not perfectly healthy, but at least understandable to want to know what Doyoung was doing, who he was with, whether he kept chewing his cuticles when Ten had tried so hard to break him of the habit. 

He returned to the dorm with that on his mind only to encounter Doyoung with a cute pig face mask on, eyes wide as he took in Ten's existence. Both of them gawked at each other for a moment before Doyoung rushed into the bathroom without giving Ten a chance to apologise. 

He returned a few minutes later, skin clear and glowing from the mask. As he passed by Ten and began clearing off his desk, he didn't say a word.

"Hey," Ten said after a few seconds had passed, unwilling to break the silence but also unwilling to let the face mask go. "Nice face mask." He could hear the playful lilt to his voice and wished he were less... the way he was.

"Thanks," Doyoung replied, pulling out his laptop and arranging himself and his blankets into a small nest on his bed. He was so stiff Ten was surprised his limbs hadn't just snapped off already. 

Despite the chilly reception, he moved forward with the conversation. "I don't remember you ever wearing any face masks."

The look of absolute exasperation on Doyoung's face, wiped away almost immediately by a forced cheer, gave Ten the emotional lift he needed to keep going. "Well, I wear them now," Doyoung said, and even though the tone of his voice begged Ten to drop it, Ten, with that irritating tenacity he was known for, pushed on.

"Looked pretty good," he said, winking; immediately, from the way Doyoung's nostrils flared, he could see that he'd gone too far. 

But instead of the outburst he was expecting, all he got was a pained sigh and Doyoung's knuckles going white around his laptop before he visibly forced himself to relax. "Ten," Doyoung said, and Ten nodded. "I can't do this. Please." Ten was thrown back to the night last week where Doyoung had said that to him: _please_. With that same desperation. All of a sudden he felt guilty. He was imposing on Doyoung's space, his time; he had shown up without any prior warning after they had cut off contact for over a year; he kept a schedule so different from Doyoung's that Doyoung had to constantly be on high social alert, something Ten knew from the past was difficult for him. All this and Ten was still needling at him, trying to get a rise out of him, looking for any reaction he could get. He'd done it when he was drunk, and then he used the alcohol as an excuse; now he was doing it when he was sober. 

Taeyong was right; he was different around Doyoung, and maybe he was obsessed. He deflated. "Sorry." It came out almost inaudibly, so he repeated it a moment later. Doyoung was still staring at him, probably out of the assumption that the apology was a fake-out and preparing himself for another onslaught of sarcasm, but Ten thought that this time he was really done. Whatever this whole situation was, it was bringing out a very ugly side of him. 

\--

"Are you going to do anything for him?" Johnny asked during their FaceTime call on Friday morning. It gave Ten pause; he actually hadn't thought about what he ought to give Doyoung in return for invading his personal space and violating his boundaries and comfort multiple times. He winced; when he thought about it like that, it felt much more obvious that he ought to return Doyoung's favour in some way. From the look on Johnny's face, he knew it too. "You weren't thinking about doing anything, were you. Ten..." 

"I'll take him out to dinner tonight!" Ten yelped. "And I'll pay for drinks!" 

When he brought it up to Doyoung, who was back in the early afternoon before Ten had to leave to teach classes, the idea didn't really seem to register. "I'm not going to buy dinner for you, Ten. Not even if you're coming home late." His tone was firm and deliberate, as if he'd rehearsed using it many times before. 

"That's not what I was suggesting," Ten replied, rolling his eyes. "I'm saying--listen!" Doyoung had already turned away, focusing on something else, and without thinking Ten grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him so they were face-to-face. He could see Doyoung's long, dark eyelashes as he blinked in surprise, and it almost made him forget what he wanted to say next. "Listen," he repeated. "I want to buy dinner for you, because I owe you. There's a place near where I work that does bar food and happy hour drinks pretty late, and I know you're free." 

Doyoung blinked again, and the mutinous set of his mouth was so intimately familiar Ten stepped back with the force of it. "Fine," he said. He didn't actually sound upset, but Ten could see that he was aggravated and that the only reason he accepted was probably because he felt that it would be enormously rude to refuse. Doyoung didn't actually like drinking that much; both he and Ten knew that Ten was aware of this, and so Ten's offer, seemingly generous to an outsider, was really an excuse for Ten himself to drink and to extend a supposed returned favour to Doyoung without actually having to make a huge effort. 

When he arrived at the bar around 8, Doyoung was already sitting in a booth, nursing what looked like an actual drink but was most likely some completely nonalcoholic soft drink. It wasn't that dark outside, but the bar wasn't that well lit, and with his chin in his hands Doyoung looked more ethereally handsome than Ten had remembered. They'd both grown up, he thought, arrested by Doyoung's skin luminous under the dim bar lighting. Both he and Doyoung had grown up, but Doyoung was the only one who showed it. Next to him Ten felt like an eternal child at play. Shaken by this idea, he put himself back together as he approached the booth, smiling in the sly way he always did. "I thought I was supposed to be buying the drinks for you!"

Doyoung regarded him, unimpressed. "The bartender didn't charge me anything. He said it was sad that I came to a bar by myself to drink Coke." 

Ten had to cover a laugh at that. "Did you look at the menu? What do you want to eat? Are you sure I can't get you a drink?" The look Doyoung leveled at him with that last statement would have made anyone else--at least, anyone not aware of how absolutely unthreatening Doyoung was--quake in their boots. Ten, completely unfazed, smiled at him. Not expecting Doyoung to take him up, he made one last offer, drawing his voice out and whining.

To his utter surprise, Doyoung glared at him, stared at the cup of Coke in his own hand, and said, with a sense of finality, "Do it then."

"Do what?" Ten said, just to make sure.

"If you're paying, then why shouldn't I drink as much as I want? Get me a drink. Whatever you're having." Everyone knew Ten had expensive taste. He looked at Doyoung again just to make sure he had heard correctly, but when he was met with another fierce glare he high-tailed it to the bar, where he ordered beers and shots for the two of them. Doyoung thought he was going to take advantage of Ten's wallet, but Ten had just gotten paid, and if he had the chance to get Doyoung drunk....

Twenty minutes later, after two shots each for both of them and Doyoung in the middle of his first beer, it was already starting to show. Apparently he hadn't drank much in the intervening time since they'd broken up; he handled his alcohol worse than ever. He wasn't slurring, nor was he slumped over, but his eyes were bright and he was talking loosely, carelessly, in a way Ten hadn't seen in a long time. Right now he was on the topic of someone in his lab: "--and he's never on time! Never! On! Time! So I end up doing all of his prep work, but the professor doesn't even care. Only the grad students notice! But they're not any use to me!" He stopped, a little crease appearing between his eyebrows from where he was frowning at Ten in suspicion. "Are you even listening to me?" 

Ten, who had half been listening and half tipsily staring at Doyoung's mouth, said, "I'm watching you." 

"Watching...?" 

"Your eyebrows still move a lot when you talk," Ten said, wiggling his own as an imitation and yelling incoherently when Doyoung reached over the table to slap at his shoulder, almost upsetting Ten's beer in the process. That was another thing: drinking made him so much more open to physical contact. Actually he'd been touchy when they were dating, too, but he wasn't normally like that with everyone else. It was just drinking that made him cuddly and affectionate. Ten wondered if he was going to get like that tonight; he seemed to have passed that stage and gone straight into intense and emotional.

Three hours later, Doyoung had made good on his promise to waste Ten's money; in addition to the beer and two shots they'd started out with, he'd forced Ten to buy him two more shots, two more beers, two mixed drinks, and (most bizarrely) a glass of frose, on which the bar was having a promotion. Ten was used to drinking regularly and in great quantities, so he'd matched Doyoung drink for drink, but he was still standing. Doyoung, on the other hand... Ten wasn't sure if he'd be able to actually stand. They'd been eating, too, but Ten wasn't sure it was enough, and he was pretty sure Doyoung hadn't eaten before he came.

When they'd arrived, the bar had seemed to be in its downtime; now it was 11, and it was filling up quickly. Doyoung was slumped back on his side of the booth, head tossed back to reveal a long pale neck that led down to a buttoned and most likely ironed shirt. It was the middle of summer, but he liked to stay covered. Ten had never met someone who was more reluctant to reveal even a slice of his actual human skin. In fact, he'd used to tease Doyoung by saying he was like a Victorian lady who thought ankles were scandalous; Doyoung, who'd read Pride and Prejudice a scant year after he'd moved to the US and thus barely understood any of it, didn't really get the joke. 

The roar of the bar around them combined with Ten's heavy head from all the drinking he'd done and the dim bar lighting made him feel like he was ready to throw in the towel, and there was no doubt Doyoung felt the same. Ten waved in front of Doyoung's face to catch his attention and got a suspicious glare from behind half-closed eyes in return. "Let's get going," he said, leaning in close to make sure Doyoung could hear him. "I think I might have given you alcohol poisoning." He was joking, of course, but the baleful glare he got in return confirmed that Doyoung was much more drunk than Ten suspected either of them had anticipated at the start of the night. 

"Fine," Doyoung said, but he remained in that languid, half-dead position. 

Ten, not wanting to look at him for too long, rose from the booth, catching himself on the table when he realised how unsteady he was. "I'm going to go close my tab. You need to be up when I get back, because I can't carry you to the dorm." 

Doyoung made a face as he passed, though Ten couldn't tell if it was aimed at him specifically since his eyes were still closed. Nonetheless, when he returned, weaving a precarious path through the crowd, Doyoung was up and collected, the only sign of his previous alcohol intake his unfocused gaze until he stood up and almost sat back down again out of sheer inability. Ten tried not to laugh; without thinking too hard about it, he grabbed Doyoung's arm and guided both of them down the few stairs that separated the ledge where their booth was from the rest of the bar, guiding them through and through the darkness and the chattering crowd, pushing forward until finally they reached the door and tumbled out.

\--

The bar was close enough to campus that Ten had initially thought they would be able to walk back, but that was when he hadn't accounted for Doyoung's mulish stubborn streak. Now, with Doyoung swaying on his feet, he wondered if they should take an Uber when he felt a tug on his arm: Doyoung was ready to begin the journey.

"Are you sure?" Ten said, only to have Doyoung glare at him.

"It'll be better," he said. He pulled at Ten's arm again, and Ten, against all his better judgment, felt his heart crumble against the petulant moue of Doyoung's mouth. 

It was a pleasant walk back; Ten liked walking out at night, when the streets and houses were brightly lit against the dark velvet of the sky. With Doyoung on his arm, he felt swept off his feet by a strong wave of nostalgia. It was on one of these nights, on a walk through campus, that he'd first taken Doyoung into a dark corner and kissed him. Thinking back on it now made his heart hurt; that version of Ten, so deeply infatuated, wouldn't have been able to anticipate the changes in either of them. That Ten had thought he was in love; Ten as he was now couldn't have said what it had been.

From the way Doyoung was sneaking glances at him out of the corner of his eye, he was not unaffected by the scene either. Doyoung was more sentimental than Ten, and there was no way the scene hadn't struck him as familiar. It was the first time in a long time they'd been alone like this. Ten, in an effort to dissuade any sort of communication, looked away, down towards the sidewalk, where their shadows were cast in a long darkness down the street and multiplied a million times by the numerous sources of light surrounding them. As they walked, their shadows walked with them: expanded and shrank, lengthened and contracted. He could see where they were linked together by Doyoung's hand on Ten's arm, a connection that amplified tenfold by the way their images on the ground stretched beyond them. He wasn't looking at Doyoung, but the warmth of his fingers was a brand nonetheless, one that felt like it would carve the image of those five slender lines of heat into Ten's forearm. Maybe it was the drink, but Ten felt deeply emotional all of a sudden, in a way that he rarely managed to access. Usually he moved on easily; right now, there was some unnameable intensity in his chest that made him want to cry. 

It was lucky for both of them that by this time they'd reached the dorm. In silence, Doyoung let go of Ten's arm to reach for his ID card and tap them in, and Ten's arm felt both lighter and colder. The jovial mood they'd somehow managed to create at the bar had disappeared, as if the walk had really been a walk down into the past of their relationship, and both of them remembered how it had ended. 

After the dim lighting of the bar and the uneven brightness of the streetlamps on their journey home, the light in Doyoung's room seemed almost aggressively fluorescent and harsh. Under it, Ten felt self-conscious in a way he'd never experienced in front of Doyoung; he was thankful when Doyoung turned on a small lamp he had on the corner of his desk and immediately switched the overhead off, as if he'd felt the same way. 

With the lamp on, the room was lit with a low, warm glow. Doyoung was stepping around his side of the room with an exaggerated deliberation--to make up for his drunk clumsiness, Ten knew. Without a conscious thought, his feet carried him across the open space separating his bed from Doyoung's; he leaned casually against Doyoung's desk.

The movement attracted Doyoung's attention. For the first time since they'd entered the room, he and Ten made eye contact. Lit by the soft golden bloom of the lamp, Doyoung's skin looked luminous, his eyes dark and intent. "What?" Doyoung said, but despite his obvious irritation, it lacked his usual bite.

"Nothing." Ten smiled at him. He'd meant it to be teasing, a little mocking the way he was most often, but he could feel how softly it landed. His heart was blossoming. The only word for it. Like a rosebud was unfurling, like a bloom was opening inside him. The last time he'd felt like this was a long time ago. 

Facing him, Doyoung looked shaken, off-kilter. His eyes darted to the side; the night shirt he was holding was twisted from the grip of his fingers. "Stop looking at me like that." Ten tilted his head to the side. He didn't even need to ask the question; it was in his eyes. The shirt twisted further in Doyoung's grasp. "You know what I mean!" He turned around and began to unbutton the shirt he was wearing, presumably to change. 

"Hey," Ten said softly.

Doyoung didn't even turn around. The stiff line of his back would have said it all, but he supplemented it with words: "Don't try it with me tonight. All of this--" meaning the night out, the alcohol, the closeness, "--was bad enough. You're." He had to stop and take a deep breath; he was working himself up in the way he was wont to do. "You're just drunk. This won't mean anything to you." It was uncharacteristic of him to say so much; usually he stopped himself. It must have been the booze loosening his tongue.

"What won't mean anything to me?" Ten questioned. He'd stepped forward; from Doyoung's small jump at how much closer Ten's voice was, he hadn't noticed. He was still turned around, hands frozen in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt. "Hey," Ten said again. "What won't?" He thought he knew, but he wanted to hear it from Doyoung's mouth.

Doyoung didn't answer. Then he said, "Don't make me say it. Because it's not going to happen tonight."

The implication shocked Ten breathless. "You think I'm trying to sleep with you?" 

Doyoung still hadn't turned to face Ten when he said, "What else could you possibly want with me?" The bitterness was palpable. "It couldn't possibly be a relationship." 

The taunt spurred Ten into physical action, his hand grasping Doyoung's shoulder to finally put them face to face. Doyoung hadn't finished unbuttoning his shirt, so his pale neck and the jut of his collarbone were clearly visible; his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. The look on his face was--not malicious, as Ten had thought for a split second. Of course not: Doyoung wasn't really capable of malice, not the poisonous kind others nurtured. His clarity, his high-mindedness: he was too noble for that, and in some ways too pretentious, too worried about what others thought of him, too concerned for his reputation. He didn't harbour malice because on one level he assumed everyone operated on the same playing field as him, and on another, contradictory level, because he feared that it might show in his actions and thus make him look bad to everyone else. Now Ten understood: the shutout from Doyoung's life had never been about Ten. It had been entirely about Doyoung: Doyoung's anxieties that he might display something he couldn't take back. Some anger, some bitterness--indeed, some malice. Those anxieties extended so deeply into Doyoung's psyche when the ex that he clearly had never gotten over showed up at his door after a year and a half of no contact begging for a place to stay, Doyoung had not only acquiesced but had forced himself to slip into a superficial nonchalance whereby he could indicate to himself that he had taken the high road and show others that the breakup had never affected him as much as they thought. 

All this passed through Ten's drunken mind in a split second, an epiphany. Instead of disgusting him as maybe it should have, it made his chest hurt. How much of this was he responsible for? Certainly not all of it--the neurotic tendencies Doyoung carried were part of his foundational personality. But the rest of it. His presence in Doyoung's friend groups, his visible hookups, his seeming lack of remorse. He wasn't responsible for how Doyoung reacted, but... 

He was pulled out of his reverie by Doyoung stiffly moving himself out of Ten's grasp. He turned around again and unbuttoned the rest of his shirt, sliding it off to reveal a white undershirt that displayed his broad shoulders and the vertebrae in the back of his neck. Without facing Ten, he said, voice made cool again through deliberate effort, "Could you turn around?" 

Ten almost laughed. "I think I've seen worse from you?"

He barely caught the murderous glance Doyoung sent him from the brief glimpse of his face as he turned his head to the side. Then, apparently having decided this battle wasn't worth fighting, he slid the tank off and his back was bare. Thinking back on it, so much of the physical side of their relationship had been conducted in the dark that Ten wondered if this was the clearest light in which he'd ever seen Doyoung: his pale back, the bones in his spine casting shadows from the lamplight. When Doyoung slid the grey sleep shirt over his head, it was all gone. His shoulders rose and fell in a deep breath, and then he turned around, mouth firmly set. His determination came as a sharp contrast to his tone when he asked, almost mournfully, "What do you even want from me?" Ten didn't know how to answer the question. He didn't know what he wanted. But it didn't appear that Doyoung was awaiting an answer; instead, those dark eyes were searching Ten's face. When he didn't seem to find what he'd been looking for, his body deflated. "Never mind," he muttered, turning away. 

"Wait," Ten said; his mouth felt numb, heavy. "I." He breathed in slowly through his nose. "I think it'd be cool if we could be friends again." He braced himself for Doyoung's inevitable anger.

Instead of cursing him out, Doyoung laughed. It was genuine, too, not forced. "No," he said. Whatever heaviness he'd been carrying around seemed to have lifted, at least temporarily, with Ten's clumsy request. The answer itself was so incongruent with his manner that Ten thought he'd heard wrong and began to smile for a moment before it registered with him what Doyoung had actually said.

"...No?"

"No way. How could I--how would it be possible for me to--" Doyoung wrestled with his words for a moment. He was clearly still drunk. "How could I be friends with you," he said. It was phrased as a question, but it wasn't said that way; even though his tone was light, the intonation landed flat and heavy, hanging in the air between them. "I still can't be around you without thinking about our relationship. We definitely can't be friends." It was so uncharacteristically honest and vulnerable that Ten instinctively wanted to reciprocate, but he couldn't think of what to say in reply. What was there to say? They'd dated for six months; they'd been broken up for twice that time. As if Doyoung had ascertained Ten's struggle, he added, "I know you don't feel like that. It wasn't ever that serious to you. But I--" His eyes darted to the side, and he breathed in deeply before continuing. "I can't do that."

That statement again: it wasn't that serious to you. It wasn't the first time Doyoung had said that, or a variation of it. "What do you mean, it wasn't that serious to me?"

For a split second Doyoung looked surprised; it was replaced by wariness. "You clearly move on faster than I do. I mean, if you look at--" He cut himself off and laughed softly, without humour. "Never mind. It really doesn't matter now. It's fine."

"What the hell do you mean?" 

Doyoung was clearly startled by his tone; Ten rarely got that serious or that upset. The uncharacteristic bleak laughter of a few moments earlier disappeared. "You broke up with me for a reason I still don't really understand," he began. "And then all I got to hear about for months after were all your hookups and conquests. What else was I supposed to think? The stuff you told me--maybe it wasn't a lie when you said it, but obviously you moved on pretty quickly. You didn't need me at all."

Ten was sweating; he could feel it trickle down his side. He was sure his face was red; he rarely had such a physical reaction to anything emotional, but maybe all the booze he'd drank had pushed him there. Whatever the cause, he could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead as he said, "Hooking up with people didn't mean I'd moved on." In fact, it had meant the opposite. He put on a good front for others, but that had been the most promiscuous period of his life for a reason: he'd subsumed whatever was going on with him emotionally into physical encounters that, while fun and consensual, hadn't necessarily been a healthy method of processing the breakup. And he couldn't have said what was going on with him then emotionally, either; now that Doyoung said it, he wasn't even sure why he'd initiated the breakup except for a sense of impending doom, the idea that the walls were going to close in on him and he had to take the most drastic action possible to stop it. Doyoung had been the casualty. 

Doyoung didn't openly scoff at his response, but his lips twisted. "It really doesn't matter. Just because it makes you look bad not to be friends with me doesn't mean I have to--accept what you want."

Ten rolled his eyes. "You literally only let me stay with you because it makes you look good. Everyone knows you hate me, so letting me stay with you is the best way to prove how much better than me you are."

Doyoung's face turned red. "I didn't have to let you in! You have no idea how hard it's been for me this past week!"

"I guess that's right, you didn't have to." Ten, struggling to regain his composure, had returned to an old standby that he knew from experience infuriated Doyoung beyond belief when they argued: he reverted to the version of himself he'd been long ago, the version Doyoung had first met and blew up at in a freshman English class, a bored, insouciant, insolent brat who controlled the argument and never rose to anyone's bait. "But come on. We all know that you want to prove your social superiority over me. How could you even live if you didn't?" 

For a moment he thought he'd provoked Doyoung into violence; but the moment passed, and Doyoung's flushed face drained of all blood, leaving him pale and cold. He cast his eyes about the room wildly. "Why are you doing this to me?" It was so plaintive that Ten's heart twinged, but now he felt reckless and cruel. 

He kept pushing. "I mean, you keep saying that it didn't matter to me. But you blocked me on everything because you're so neurotic you can't handle a breakup like a regular person. It's been over a year and you still don't go anywhere you think I might be." Doyoung flinched at that, as if he'd hoped Ten didn't know. "You're so obsessed with me. You should figure that out without putting me in the middle of it." Unconsciously he echoed what Taeyong had said to him: _You're obsessed with him! Go figure that out!_ He regretted it as soon as it came out of his mouth, but it stood between them now, an tremendous weight.

For a long second, Doyoung stared at him, eyes wide and breathing shallow, as if he couldn't believe those words had really come out of Ten's mouth. Then his face crumpled; he turned aside to hide it, but not fast enough. Alarmed, Ten wondered if he was crying, but he didn't dare turn Doyoung to figure it out. A moment later, Doyoung said, voice so low Ten almost couldn't hear him. "I tried. But you showed up at my door." The words were bare and unadorned. "Do you think that I didn't know any of that? I know I'm your worst ex. It's been very difficult for me. And then you came here asking for a place to stay and I thought I could change something. That was stupid." The last was said almost as an aside, as if Ten weren't meant to catch it. Doyoung cast those big eyes, wet with unshed tears, up to Ten. "I just don't know what you want from me anymore." 

Ten felt nauseated with regret and shame. "Listen," he started slowly. "Doyoung, I'm so sorry. I should have--"

But Doyoung was already shaking his head. Without saying a word, he took Ten by the shoulders and guided him to the bed where Ten was staying. His touch was warm and firm, more gentle than Ten suspected he deserved. Then he walked over to his desk and turned the lamp off. Instead of being shrouded in darkness, the room lost its warmth; it was touched again by the cold light of the streetlight outside the window. In that light, Ten could barely see Doyoung, outlined faintly as he was, taking off the jeans he'd worn to the bar and getting into bed, a dark line under his covers. He waited a moment longer and shed his own jeans, slipping into bed, disgusted by his own cruelty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> still on [cc](https://curiouscat.me/monopolizers) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/_monopolizers)  
> ! come talk 2 me about the nct comeback :O


	4. Chapter 4

The light of Saturday morning came, and Doyoung was nowhere to be found. Even as Ten lingered in the room, waiting and hoping that he could make a profuse apology, Doyoung never showed. It was only in the late afternoon, when Johnny texted him asking about the condition of their place, that he forced himself up and out, back off campus, back into the place he was paying rent to live, away from whatever brutalities he'd committed in the nighttime.

_I think I fucked up_ , he wanted to tell someone. But he thought Doyoung would need to tell someone what happened first, and this time he knew that he'd done wrong and so he forced himself to wait, to let Doyoung have the support of their friends on this one. It was only after a week, and then another, passed without any word of disapproval that he forced himself to contact Kun.

"Where have you been?" were the first words out of Kun's mouth when he seated himself at their favourite spot to have dinner: a tiny Chinese hole-in-the-wall two blocks off campus. "Good to know you're not dead, anyway."

"I probably should be, though," Ten said. He could hear how flat he sounded and picked at the menu to avoid Kun's gaze. 

Kun laughed, but he sobered quickly when he realised how serious Ten was. "Are you okay?" he asked curiously, peering at Ten's face. "What did you do?"

Ten could feel his body go cold and hot and cold again, but he forced himself to speak. "Dude... I really fucked up. With Doyoung." The words themselves came out easier than he'd thought they would.

To his confusion, Kun looked as curious as ever. "What do you mean? You moved out without saying anything, so I figured things went fine."

Ten understood: Doyoung hadn't told him. The hot feeling of shame increased. "I..." He didn't know where to begin. "I think I said some things I really shouldn't have said." 

"Like what?"

No matter how much he knew he should come clean, the words wouldn't come out. He ducked his head again. "Just... stuff. Really shitty stuff. We kind of had a fight the last night I was there."

When he looked up, Kun seemed lost in thought. "Actually, that makes sense," he said finally. "You've been missing, but Doyoung's been..." He trailed off, lips pursed. "I was just joking when I said you seemed dead, but he's been completely empty." Ten didn't say anything in response, but Kun, seeing the question in his eyes, continued, "It doesn't really seem like he's all there. He's functioning fine, but he won't come out with us even for dinner or something. And he deactivated his Facebook. He said it was just because he didn't need it anymore, but he barely uses it anyway, so I don't get why..." He didn't really finish the sentence, but he didn't need to for Ten to get the idea. His stomach roiled with nausea. 

All of a sudden he felt absolutely overcome and put his face in his hands. "Ten?" Kun said. He sounded genuinely concerned; it was unusual for Ten to act like this. "Hey. Are you okay? I'm sure it'll be all right. You guys were never friendly after the breakup, right? It's my fault. I shouldn't have suggested it. I didn't realise you were still--" He stumbled over his own words a bit. "I didn't know you still had feelings for him."

"I don't," Ten said, his voice muffled by his palms. "I definitely don't." When he chanced a glance up, Kun was giving him a skeptical look. Ten was again reminded uncomfortably of Taeyong's last proclamation to him: You're obsessed with him! Go figure that out! "I don't!" he exclaimed, maybe too defensively.

Kun raised his eyebrows. "I'm not saying you're madly in love with him. It's not that shocking to still have feelings left for an ex." He smiled, maybe to soften the blow of what he was going to say next. "You're not that special, even if you hide it better than most people." Ten grimaced, and Kun shrugged. "I'm sure what you said wasn't really that bad." Ten wondered if he'd say the same if he actually knew the content of the conversation. "But maybe you should apologise?"

"I don't think I could reach him. He already blocked me on everything, and I haven't seen him anywhere."

Kun made a face. "That's fair. You could try using my phone to text him if you want." 

Ten was shaking his head before the sentence even ended. "That would break his trust. I don't think he wants to talk to me at all. And that's fair, but..." His shoulders slumped; he sighed. 

Kun's small smile said he understood. "You've always known him pretty well, huh?"

"What do you mean? I mean, we dated, but even then, I don't know if it was--we fought so much."

"You fought because you pushed his buttons," Kun said. He paused. "Maybe it's not that you know him as much as you--understand him? You understand his motivations, what makes him tick. You just always used it against him." He winced as the words came out of his mouth. "Ah--I didn't mean that as badly as it sounded." 

Of course the problem was that he was right. So now: the question of the rectification of wrongs, the question of whether that was even possible. Ten wasn't holding his breath about it.

\--

Although he hadn't intended it, the rest of the summer passed in a slow haze of light seeping through the blinds in his room, spilling into the dance studio, falling over his hair when he cooked breakfast in the morning. Before he knew it, June and July had come and gone; it was mid-August, a week before the start of school, and Johnny was suggesting they throw a party.

Ten, who had been caught off guard--it was early enough that he didn't have the presence of mind to focus--said, very intelligently, "Huh?"

"A party."

"In our house?" 

Johnny rolled his eyes. "No, in Kun's house." He paused. "Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea, but he'd never go for it. Yeah, at ours. Just a few people, though."

"A few people" turned into a mid-size gathering. Johnny had invited a few of the grad students and recent graduates he knew from his accelerated Masters program, and Ten had invited a few people from the studio who brought their own friends along with them. All this mingling ended up with Jungwoo, who Ten had just met a couple of hours ago, puking his guts out in their bathroom at 2 AM. Ten, who was stood outside, shared a look with Johnny. "You okay?" he called cautiously.

"I'm okay!" Jungwoo said; it was ended abruptly as he heaved again, but he didn't seem to have anything left in him. When he exited, he stumbled and almost fell onto Johnny as they made their way through the living room and onto the porch. 

"Who should we call to get you?" Johnny asked him, and then repeated himself in Korean when Jungwoo didn't seem to understand. 

His eyes lit up; he said something that Ten didn't catch except for a name that sounded unpleasantly familiar. From Jungwoo's other side--the two of them were practically holding him up--Johnny made an apologetic face. 

"I don't know what he said," Ten replied in response to Johnny's ever more varied expressions. This was both true and untrue; he didn't know what Jungwoo had said, but he could certainly guess at it. 

"Doyoung's gonna come pick him up," Johnny said in a low voice. "Sorry... I know it's awkward."

Ten shrugged with the shoulder that Jungwoo wasn't clutching onto for dear life. "It's cool." It definitely was not cool; he could feel himself sweating again, an undesirable sensation in the cool night air, and his stomach flipped a couple of times in a way that could not be attributed to the two beers he'd had at midnight. 

Jungwoo said something in Korean that made Johnny wince, and then he said it again in English that had gotten more strongly accented with every drink: "I'm sorry, Ten! I know you just met me! You probably think I'm terrible." He paused for a moment in a way that pushed Ten and Johnny to the edge of the porch out of fear that he might vomit again, but he gathered himself admirably. 

Ten almost laughed out of pity. "It's fine," he said, hoping he seemed collected enough that it came across as genuine. "You're fine, don't worry."

All too soon a battered red car pulled up in front of their house and into the driveway. Between the two of them, Johnny and Ten managed to drag an unsteady Jungwoo up to the passenger seat, and Johnny pulled the door open and shoved him inside. "Thanks, Doyoung," he said, bending down. "We could have called him an Uber, I guess, but if he puked it would have been a lot of money. I know you don't come out much. I hope it wasn't too much trouble." Ten couldn't see Doyoung from where he was, but he could hear that airy voice say something he couldn't quite make out. Johnny laughed and nodded. "Yeah, of course. I can tell him." He made sure all of Jungwoo was safely inside the car before he shut the passenger side door, and Doyoung started the car up again. 

Up until then Ten had been standing awkwardly back with his hands shoved inside the pockets of his joggers. The moon was very bright, he was uncomfortably sober, and the night hadn't really gone as expected; he hadn't expected Doyoung to show up, of course, even though Johnny had invited him as he always did out of courtesy, but seeing the rest of their overlapping social circle had made the pit of guilt that had taken up residence in his stomach grow ever wider and larger. It had become increasingly clear that Doyoung had reacted to Ten's drunken insults in the way that was most characteristic of him: rather than reaching out, he'd retreated into himself. Kun said that they rarely saw each other, and Taeyong had mentioned offhandedly that he could hardly get a text back. Even people peripheral to Ten's social circle, like Johnny's grad friends, had absentmindedly noted his unusual absences. In Ten's emotional clumsiness, he'd inadvertently pushed Doyoung further into himself. The stuffy heat of shame sank down onto him again as he gazed at Doyoung's car under the orange streetlights. 

He could see the shadow of Doyoung's hand on the gearstick; as he put the car into reverse, Ten surprised himself by stepping forward and tapping on the window. Behind him, he could hear Johnny draw in a sharp breath; over Jungwoo's head lolled to the side, he could see Doyoung's hand still and then push the car back into park. 

Doyoung rolled down the passenger side window. His gaze was cool. "What?"

"If I texted you, would you text me back?"

Doyoung was clearly trying to keep it together, but being on the receiving end of a question he so clearly considered beyond the pale pushed him out of that emotional deadness. "No!"

Ten backtracked. "I said it wrong," he said, flustered. "I know I fucked up. Can you let me just--make it up to you?" 

"Like you did last time? I think I could do without that."

"No, like actually make it up to you."

Doyoung met and held his gaze. "I could do without that," he repeated evenly. "Can you leave me alone? I need to take Jungwoo home." At his name, Jungwoo shifted and muttered something in Korean under his breath; looking down at him, Doyoung's face softened in a palpable way. 

Ten made one last effort. "Just meet me once," he said. "In a public place. It'll be the last time. I need to..." He didn't even know how to finish. He needed to apologise; he wanted to explain himself. At least one of those, maybe both, was a selfish desire, yet he wanted them fulfilled nonetheless. This neverending obsession. 

It was only Ten's luck that Doyoung, despite his rigidity, had always been weak even to Ten's most self-centered impulses. "Maybe," he said, looking away. There was a silence. "Fine. Whatever."

Then, without waiting for a reply, he rolled up the window, set the car in reverse, and pulled out of the driveway in one smooth motion. Ten stepped back, his hands shoved back into his pockets. In silence, he and Johnny watched the old car drive off towards campus.

\--

The cafe Doyoung had suggested was pretty far off campus, and it was one Ten didn't recognise at all. He understood the significance behind this: Doyoung didn't want any of his usual haunts ruined by Ten again. Of course he didn't; it was the beginning of their senior year, the Sunday before classes started, in fact, and he wanted to go out on a high note. Ten knew all this and yet he could feel that old pit in his stomach as he stepped in, a leftover anxiety from his first years in this country, when every new place felt like an insurmountable hurdle. He caught sight of Doyoung in the corner, face serious as he typed away on his laptop; when he glanced up and saw Ten, the focus in his eyes wiped clean away. He shoved his laptop away, clearing the table for Ten to sit in front of him. As Ten took a seat, Doyoung's hands were clasped on the table in front of him. He didn't say anything, only raised an eyebrow in an indication for Ten to begin.

"Do you want anything?" Ten started. "Like, a drink..."

Doyoung shook his head. He didn't say _please don't waste my time,_ but the studied languor with which he sat back in his chair shouted it better than he could ever have. It was so clearly an act, and yet even that didn't make Ten feel better. He'd learned, by now, that Doyoung would never go with feeling over rationality. Doyoung did what he thought was best for him in the end game, even if that meant denying himself what he wanted in the short term. Even knowing that what he was doing was a performance indicated how he felt; if he really thought Ten was fucking him around, if Ten couldn't communicate his apology clearly, he and Doyoung would go back to a no-contact initiated and held firmly in place by Doyoung. 

With this in mind, Ten said, "I'm sorry. I should say other stuff, too, but I think I need to begin with that. I'm really sorry." Doyoung nodded. "I really violated your boundaries. You didn't have to let me stay with you, and you did, and I said some stuff to you that was..." He paused, searching for the right word. "Unforgivable. So I'm not asking for your forgiveness, exactly..."

"But that is exactly what you're asking for." Doyoung finished the sentence for him although that wasn't what Ten had meant to say. "That's it? That's what you're apologising for?" What else could he possibly want? They looked at each other for a moment before that pink mouth parted on a sigh and those dark eyes darted to the side.

"Is there something else you feel like I need to say sorry for?" 

Doyoung's eyes scanned the room with no focus. He was doing his best to avoid eye contact with Ten. "Making me ask for it when you wouldn't offer it..." he muttered, almost to himself. Then his gaze sat directly level with Ten's own. "But." His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. "I need to know, I guess. Yeah, I want an apology. For our breakup." Ten, who had not come with any intention of dredging up that old wound, sat back in astonishment. "We're both graduating soon, and I still don't--" He passed a hand over his face. "I have a lot of questions. I won't ask you any of them, but I need an apology for what happened at the end."

Ten was silent for a moment as he struggled with how to reply. "I don't... What part of it?"

"Oh, I don't know," Doyoung said, so casually that Ten feared what might come next. "What about the part where you broke up with me a week after I told you I loved you for the first time?"

Ten had no clue what his face was doing, but he thought it might be frozen in some sort of grimace. He looked down to gather his composure and said, "Breakups happen all the time, Doyoung."

"Don't patronise me," Doyoung snapped. "Do you think that just because you were the first person I ever dated that I'm some sort of naive idiot? Yes, I was inexperienced, but I deserved better than that." He drew in an unsteady breath. "You knew that I struggled with our relationship. It took a lot of courage for me to say what I said to you, and your response was to end it because we were too committed? I wasn't proposing marriage. I was being vulnerable. Fuck you for that." The last sentence was spat with such venom that Ten wanted to curl into himself to protect himself from it. The entire little speech sounded like Doyoung had rehearsed it; it was likely that he had, for over a year.

"I'm not patronising you. I'm just saying, people break up all the time for all kinds of reasons. I didn't need to explain myself to you."

Doyoung's face passed through despair followed by grim resignation. "Of course not. You don't need to do anything. But sometimes, don't you see, you have obligations to other people. When you're tied emotionally to someone, someone who loves you--" he forced himself through the word _love_ \--"you follow through on those obligations even if you don't have the same attachment to them as they do to you." He paused for a moment and then shook himself. "I'm talking about us," he said, somewhat unnecessarily. "What I'm meaning to say is that you didn't need to explain yourself to me, but you should have. You weren't required to, but it would have been nice if you had. You didn't let me ask any questions, and then for so long afterward I had to see you--everywhere! How could I keep going on? I didn't tell you that I loved you because I was confused about it."

"But you were," Ten said slowly. "I was the first boy you ever dated. You said so yourself, you were inexperienced. You got emotionally attached to someone who wasn't a good choice. It was a beginner's mistake."

"First, don't fucking patronise me. Second, I don't see our relationship as having been a mistake." Doyoung's voice was low and intense. "Do you?" That made Ten stop. Maybe he took too long to respond, because Doyoung looked away with that wild despair on his face again. "I knew I shouldn't have agreed to this. Another thing I can..." He didn't finish the sentence, but Ten could guess: another thing he would obsess on, another part of his life to bring up in those agonising moments of emotional instability.

"I didn't say it was a mistake overall," Ten said. "It was a mistake for you to choose me." He could hear how stupid he sounded as the words left his mouth, and Doyoung seemed to concur from the way his face darkened.

"Now I have to sit and comfort you over your inability to commit?" he asked, sounding furious. "You were perfectly capable of continuing to date me. You chose not to because you're a coward. That has nothing to do with me. I trusted you based on the available information. I didn't make a mistake; you misrepresented yourself."

"The available information?" Ten scoffed. "Our relationship wasn't a statistics problem or a bio lab, and you didn't treat it like that when we were together. You trusted me because you felt it, not because you decided to rationally. And clearly it was a stupid decision, a stupid feeling. Those happen sometimes, especially to those of us who aren't so blessed with the capacity to separate our emotions from our rational minds."

Rather than getting worked up again, Doyoung's posture collapsed into itself. Bent over the table like this, even his broad shoulders looked small and defeated. "I don't want to believe that," he told the tabletop. "Not moving on after we broke up is one thing, and it only has to do with me and my own problems. But if you really believe that our entire relationship was a stupid decision, what does that say about the future?" Every word sounded like it was a stitch holding him together and getting ripped out all the same. "If either you or I keep dating, then trust is stupid? Vulnerability is a stupid decision and not worth it? I don't trust you now, Ten, but I did once. I don't want to believe that that was a stupid decision. You might not believe this, but even I have my limits, you know. I need the hope to keep going." 

There was a long silence that hung over them then, broken by the background chatter of the cafe. It was late in the evening, almost nighttime, and the baristas had turned on dim lamps to augment the weak light still filtering through the windows high up on the walls. Outside, Ten could barely make out the brilliant pink end of a bright sunset. A barista yelled out an order. Doyoung looked up, and he and Ten made eye contact. 

Doyoung was the first to look away. "Anyway," he told his bag, gathering his stuff in order less because it needed to be organised and more because he clearly needed something to do with his hands. "I guess it really was stupid to ask for an apology for that. My mistake. Thanks for everything else." He swung his bag onto his back and stood up in one fluid motion. Then he walked out. Ten, who was sitting facing away from the door, didn't even turn around to watch him go. Instead, he stayed at the table, tracing the wood grains with his fingertips, lost in thought.

\--

So senior year went on. Ten was preparing for a piece in the winter showcase, one he'd been thinking about since the summer, and though he was as focused as ever in the studio, outside of it his mind was elsewhere. It was only when moving that he could clear his mind. In fact he'd always been like that to some extent; he put up a good front, but at the bottom of it he found words superfluous when, to him, body language said it all. So he went to classes, he went to work, and at the end of the day he stayed back at the studio and practiced the same exercises until he was dripping in sweat and his mind was completely clear. 

"I've barely seen you around these days," Johnny said reproachfully one Thursday, when Ten's boss refused to let him stay any longer. "I thought the point of us living together was to hang out more, not less."

"I'm sorry," Ten said, and he was surprised to find that he meant it. "Let me drop my stuff off in my room and take a shower. Do you want to order in?"

To Johnny laughter came naturally, more naturally even than breathing; he laughed in his low, soothing way and said, "Thought you'd never ask."

After his shower, freshly scrubbed clean and eating pizza straight from the box with no plate, Ten said, "How have you been lately?"

Johnny shrugged. "It's been all right. I know I gave you a hard time, but I think everyone's been a little swamped. I guess for you guys it's senior year, right, so things get busy anyway." 

"Yeah." Ten was quiet for a moment as he shoved half a slice into his mouth. He hadn't finished chewing when he said, "I've barely seen Kun either, or any of the kids."

"Oh yeah, like that one who was here at the beginning of the year. Jungwoo. How is he, anyway? I feel like he was cool, but then I never really got a chance to talk to him after... you know." 

"He's in one of my classes. He's cool. I think he kind of avoids me because of, um..." Ten trailed off, unsure of how to finish the sentence. Factually, he was pretty sure Jungwoo avoided him because he had a strong loyalty to Doyoung. Jungwoo seemed nice, but Ten knew people like that in the way that he knew himself--they (and he) had mean vindictive streaks. He had no clue what Doyoung had said, but he was pretty sure it couldn't have been that bad just knowing Doyoung's personality, so either Jungwoo had read between the lines or gotten someone else to fill him in. "Uh, I don't know," he finished lamely.

Johnny gave him a knowing look. "Because he's friends with Doyoung?"

Ten shrugged one shoulder. "Yeah," he admitted. "But that's just what I think, I don't know for sure." 

Johnny took a huge bite of his pizza and chewed thoughtfully. "Have you thought about talking to him again?"

Ten squeezed his eyes shut, screwing up his face and releasing it only when he was sure he wouldn't make any incriminating expression. "Ah... I did," he confessed. "The day after the party when he picked Jungwoo up, actually."

Johnny sat straight up. "You didn't tell me that." It wasn't a question. 

"Yeah, because it went really badly. We had a huge fight. It was..." Ten narrowly avoided rubbing his hands on his face when he remembered that there was still pizza grease on them and grabbed for some napkins instead. He heaved a deep sigh. "Really bad."

Johnny raised an eyebrow at him in question. 

"He wanted me to apologise for breaking up with him, I told him our entire relationship was his bad mistake, he got upset with me."

Johnny's eyes were huge by the end of the sentence. "Dude," was his only contribution. He clearly wanted to ask for more details, but in his gentle way, he restrained himself because he could see that Ten didn't want to elaborate.

"I know," Ten said. "I know!" 

"Do you actually think that, though?" In response to Ten's questioning look, Johnny clarified: "Do you actually think the relationship was a mistake on his part?" He could probably see Ten gearing up to argue, so he rushed on. "I'm not saying you should have apologised, and I kinda think he overreacted to the breakup too. But like... you know how he is. And weren't you the first guy he'd ever been with, period?"

"We're not lesbians," Ten said sourly. He corrected himself at once: "Obviously not, lesbians at least stay friends with their exes after. We moved fast because we were like nineteen. People break up all the time when they're nineteen. I would have been fine staying friends with him. He was the one who didn't want that, and he proved it."

"Then why did he let you stay with him in the first place?" Johnny said. 

"He realised that blocking people for longer than the length of the relationship isn't a way adults act?" 

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Don't be deliberately obtuse." He'd pulled out the big vocabulary, which meant Ten had actually annoyed him a little. "I don't think you're really being fair about this. Don't--get defensive." He held up a hand to pre-empt Ten's indignation. "Listen. You weren't really ready to be someone's first when you were nineteen. You're not even ready for it now, so you definitely weren't ready for it back then. Both of you made stupid mistakes that nineteen year-olds make because you were nineteen, but you--" he pointed a finger at Ten--"are afraid of what you did. You really want to disclaim any responsibility for hurting his feelings? I'm not saying you have to apologise for breaking up with him, but at least try to understand him. You're not actually heartless, Ten, even if you try to act like it sometimes. What are you so afraid of? You'll end up with a little more empathy for another human being?"

Curled up on the couch, Ten sulked; he had nothing to say in response to that. "Why is my only straight friend also the only one with good advice?" he asked dramatically in lieu of actually having to reply. 

Johnny laughed. "It's because I have to deal with everyone else's relationship fuckups." Then his face straightened out. "But really," he said more softly, "just think about it, okay? I think you'll really regret it if you graduate without resolving it."

\--

In bed that night he lay on his back and stared straight up at the ceiling. He could feel Johnny's words ricocheting around in his skull, but he didn't want to think about them. Somehow, the cost felt too high. Truthfully between Taeyong, Johnny and Kun he could see what they were pushing him toward: there was something unsettled within him. It had to do with Doyoung, but Doyoung couldn't fix it. Only Ten could fix whatever was happening in his heart, the turmoil Johnny's words caused churning within him like an agitated sea.

Johnny's words: What are you so afraid of? And Taeyong's: You're obsessed with him! Figure it out!

Was he obsessed? He couldn't say. Ten considered himself obsessive in the way anyone so driven was obsessive: he was consumed by dance, and it made up almost every part of his core priorities. He'd moved halfway across the world to pursue it. But beyond it, he'd never considered himself to be so controlled. He was one of the few dancers he knew who could maintain a social life outside of dance, who was good at talking to people and socialising. He wasn't Taeyong, whose anxiety seeped through into every interaction, or Sicheng, whose strong reserve and general distaste for social situations came across as shyness. Ten was gregarious, personable--a little mean, but people put up with it because they liked him. The only exception was Doyoung.

Across the room a shadow stretched and shrank as a car with its highbeams on passed by. It was very late, but he lived on a main street near a few bars; from the window, he could hear drunk murmurs of girls on the street below as they took off their heels and strolled back to campus. His eyes burned with insomnia.

When he and Doyoung had first met they hadn't gotten along at all; Doyoung then, as he did now, had an inflexible iron core. The problem was that they'd kept being shoved together because of their friend groups, and so they'd had to learn how to pretend to like each other; this had proved easier for Ten than for Doyoung, who was easily baited and inflamed. But Ten had enjoyed his reactions, and he'd thought Doyoung was cute, so he did what he did best and pulled pigtails until that fateful night they were walking home from a party together and he'd dragged Doyoung aside and kissed him square on the mouth. From there it'd seemed to all fall into place easily, so easily that it was almost terrifying. In some ways it was hard to believe it was Doyoung's first relationship; the singlemindedness that made him such a terrifying conversational opponent made him a devoted boyfriend, and his frankness meant he ended up much better at communicating than Ten, who preferred to ignore problems until they disappeared. In other ways it was easy to believe: Doyoung blushed every time they so much as held hands. Sometimes he got embarrassed when Ten complimented him, and then other times he tried to build the confidence to accept until it all disappeared when Ten caught him off guard. 

When Ten looked back on it, he'd liked dating Doyoung. He'd liked it maybe too much. He'd felt himself getting comfortable and it scared him; at the same time that his relationship was becoming more serious, his responsibility in dance was too. It wasn't that he'd thought Doyoung wouldn't understand--in many ways Doyoung was more serious than him, and at times Ten had felt keenly aware that if Doyoung ever thought Ten was getting in the way of his studies then he would have been dropped faster than he could imagine. 

So why had they broken up? Ten couldn't understand now. He remembered doing it, certainly: he remembered walking to Doyoung's dorm with that idea held firmly in his mind. Doyoung had only asked why once, and when Ten had avoided a straight answer his face went white. He'd said, "Stay here," and pushed Ten to the doorway. Ten had watched Doyoung gather all of Ten's stuff into a box, which he then handed to Ten with hurt held just behind his eyes. They both understood that it had been so Ten didn't have to come back.

"I'll get you your stuff," Ten had started to say, but Doyoung interrupted him.

"Don't bother." Ten had been pushed out unceremoniously and the slam of the door rang behind him. Doyoung only got his stuff back when Ten had handed it off to a confused Kun. All of their friends had been confused, but bless them, almost all of them had let life go on. It was only now that Ten wondered if that had been hard for Doyoung. For Ten himself it had been ideal; he hadn't wanted to discuss the reasons, and save Johnny questioning him a few times, he had never had to. For Doyoung, who processed his emotions at an almost glacial pace, it must have been fine at first, but as time wore on Ten could only have imagined how agonising it was. Ten didn't really consider himself obsessive, it was true, but Doyoung certainly tended that way. Beyond it, even. He dwelled on problems in ways that probably should have been handled by a professional counselor. 

But that hadn't pushed Ten to initiate the breakup either; in that short time they were dating he'd been infatuated enough to find it cute instead of frustrating. So why, then?

The only conclusion he was coming to was that he'd broken up with Doyoung because he was scared. And that led him straight back to Johnny's question: _What are you so afraid of?_

What scared him? He had a lot of day to day worries, but when it came to abstract fears, he wasn't afraid of much. He could list them on a hand, maybe: the ever-present fear of his body giving out on him. The distant fear of his family coming to their senses and demanding that he return to Thailand. Losing his visa. Getting gay bashed--he'd received his fair share of nasty looks or comments, but he'd never been at the end of any physical violence, although maybe that fear wasn't so abstract now that he thought about it. 

What scared him when it came to Doyoung? He hadn't been afraid of anything when he was actually with Doyoung. He'd felt safe tucked up in front of Doyoung's broad shoulders. Doyoung himself had usually been the one with the worries, even if he'd tried his best to hide them. These days he seemed less anxious, less weighed down by lead. When they'd stayed together for those two weeks Ten sometimes heard him singing in the shower or saw him smiling to himself for no reason at all. Lying here now, in the dark of his room, he could feel the muscle memory of the rare times he'd been awoken in the early morning to hear Doyoung softly singing to himself in the adjoining bathroom. The sun hadn't even been up yet, and Ten's entire body had been aching from his practices and lessons the night before; he'd drifted back to sleep listening to Doyoung's angelic voice. He'd forgotten about it in the intervening months.

What was he afraid of? Being so intimate with someone that his body longed for them the way it was longing now. That night when Doyoung had pushed him, his body had been yearning the same; he'd desired closeness and had no idea of it. He'd gone about it in the worst way. It wasn't just an aimless desire, either: that, at least, was a problem he knew how to fix. Ten was old enough, now, to know that there was a difference between wanting someone just to want anyone and wanting someone because you wanted them particularly. He wanted Doyoung. He was afraid he couldn't have him. He'd been afraid of not having him, so afraid he'd cut Doyoung loose himself. 

He pressed a hand to his face when he felt a tear make its way down his cheek; he had no idea what to do with himself when he cried. He blinked a couple more times, but nothing else seemed to be forthcoming.

What was he afraid of? He couldn't even think near the word in all its terror and glory, but he knew that in his insecurity he'd fucked it up. Abruptly he turned onto his stomach and buried his face into his pillow. How could he still feel so much for someone he'd known for such a short time? Maybe he and Doyoung were more alike than he thought.

\--

He voiced that thought, in a watered-down form, to Kun the next time they met in the student union food court. It was risky to be bringing up Doyoung at all, but Kun didn't call him out on it. Instead, he got a faraway look on his face. 

"What?" said Ten, feeling nervous.

"Nothing," Kun said, smiling softly. "I feel like ever since this summer you've been talking about him a lot. Didn't you guys have that fight?"

Ten didn't ask which one; if Kun didn't know about what happened in August, he didn't want to say. "Yeah, but living with him..." He let the sentence trail off and shrugged a shoulder with studied nonchalance.

"I guess he's on your mind now, huh. If you're alike... I don't think I would say so. Maybe complementary? Like you play off each other's strengths." He paused, thinking for a moment. "But in the opposite of that. Like you actually target each other's weaknesses. So maybe not."

It was at that unlucky moment that Kun caught sight of Doyoung. Ten rarely saw him on campus; it wasn't just that Doyoung was avoiding him but that, same as over the summer, their schedules were completely opposite. He'd ventured out of the house before noon on a rare occasion simply to meet Kun and this was what it got him, he thought bitterly: Kun waving Doyoung down to sit with them because he was under the impression that the two of them were on speaking terms now.

"We were just talking about you!" Kun said brightly.

Doyoung cast a suspicious glance over at Ten. "Really," he said; it was clearly intended to be neutral, but it just came off as blank. 

Kun, with his overly-well-tuned sense of social graces, could immediately sense that something was off between the two of them. Of course he did--he knew they'd fought earlier in the summer. But the way he was glancing between them said that maybe he could see something more too; Doyoung was not particularly subtle even when he tried his hardest. Most of the time it was the effort itself that gave him away. 

"Nothing bad," Kun said, smiling. He was clearly trying to be reassuring. Doyoung's mood seemed to be such that his attempt fell flat.

"From Ten? I doubt that." Doyoung was rarely so openly acerbic; he must have really been in a bad mood. Even Kun, who was normally a champion at mediating awkward situations, didn't know what to say in response. His smile fell flat.

After a moment's pause, Doyoung sat down with them. In his hand was a small bowl from one of the stalls in the food court; he'd probably been on his way to his room to grab a quick lunch before heading back to the lab. They were sitting near a window, and from here Ten could see how tired he looked. Normally he seemed a little more put together; now he had dark circles under his eyes and his hair was flat in some places, sticking up in others. 

"So!" Kun said in another weak attempt to break the awkwardness. "I haven't seen you in ages. How have things been?"

"We saw each other at the res hall meetings last night," Doyoung pointed out. He rubbed a hand over his face and then opened the small bowl of rice and vegetables on the table. "And you're with Ten a lot these days."

"Ah..." Kun said. To his credit, he soldiered right on past the comment about Ten. "You're right, I guess. But you disappeared so fast!"

"I'm getting grad school applications ready. And I have some midterms coming up too." _And I don't really want to see anyone_ , was the unspoken subtext.

"Same," Ten said. He hadn't been expecting himself to say anything, and it seemed that neither had Doyoung. For a moment their startled eyes met, and then Doyoung's head went back down to his bowl. "About the midterms, I mean. I feel like they keep getting earlier."

"And you're preparing a piece for the winter showcase, right?" Kun said. Curse his good memory. At this, Doyoung looked up in interest, his earlier hostility melted away.

"What kind of piece are you doing?" he said, eyes sharp. 

"I'm doing two group pieces like everyone else, but they've also asked me to prepare an individual piece, so..." He looked away from the table to avoid Doyoung's keen gaze.

After a pause, Kun said, "Isn't that great?" a touch too heartily. Ten, having known him for this long, could tell how absolutely awkward he felt in this moment, and how much he was regretting waving Doyoung over. 

Doyoung, completely ignoring Kun's social agony, said, "That's impressive." He sounded as genuine as he'd ever been, and his eyes were very dark and intent. Ten, who didn't trust himself to say anything else, nodded.

They all sat in silence a few moments longer as Doyoung shoveled food into his mouth; in no time at all, his bowl was empty, and he was standing up and waving off Kun's attempts to accompany him back to the dorm. As they watched him walk out the door of the student union, Kun turned to Ten and said, with uncharacteristic verve, "What the hell was that?" 

Ten shrugged. 

"That wasn't just a fight over the summer... That was something I didn't really deserve to be dragged into." Kun didn't sound angry, just a little upset and taken aback.

"You're right," Ten admitted. He looked down at the table, weaving his fingers together as he thought. "It wasn't my fault that time, though. He just makes things awkward."

"Both of you make things awkward," Kun said, laughing. He sounded almost relieved, like the tension of the situation dissipating had pushed him into nervous giggles. "That was really weird, you know. That was such a weird mood flip." 

Ten didn't say anything. He was too busy thinking about Doyoung's intense gaze, the dark circles under his eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

A few weeks later he had the unexpected chance to see Doyoung again.

Taeyong and Jaehyun were throwing a rare party. Taeyong's initial intention had clearly been to have a small party for just his circle of friends, but the problem was that he was simultaneously too much of a neat freak to want a real party happening in his house and too friendly to kick out anyone who showed up. The outcome was that without fail, he got more drunk in order to deal with the mess he knew he would have to clean up the next day; the effect of said outcome was that even more people showed up as Taeyong drunk was something of a legend.

Ten, who rarely drank too much, found himself outside on the porch with Johnny. It was cold, but not so cold that Ten had hesitated to pick a beer from the cooler on his way out. Inside the music was pounding. Taeyong was probably dancing, maybe on a table if he had had enough to drink. Taeil, who rarely showed up to these things anymore, had made an appearance and was most likely warbling Adele somewhere in a corner to a rapt audience, perhaps the wide-eyed freshmen from one of Jaehyun's gen eds. Ten loved them all, but the crowd had gotten to him; after enough time, he'd tapped Johnny on the shoulder and jerked his head to the door. Now they were here. The streetlights were bright enough to hide the stars, but by the corner of the porch roof he could see the full moon peeking out from behind a tree. Johnny's head was on his shoulder; neither of them said a word.

From down the street Ten could make out two shadowy figures, one holding a six pack. His entire body went cold in the way it did whenever he was surprised with no warning; to calm himself, he breathed in deeply. Doyoung almost never came to parties, and he certainly never came this late. Even if he did have the habit of bringing his own beer wherever he went, it was likely that other people had the same habit. There wasn't any reason to be alarmed.

But of course there was a reason. As the two approached he could make out the light airy voice of the sophomore who'd puked in his bathroom before the start of the school year: Jungwoo. He was laughing and hitting Doyoung on the shoulder as Doyoung was smiling enormously back at him. Ten didn't think he'd stiffened up enough for anyone to notice, but Johnny picked his head up and gave Ten a look. "Do you want to go back inside?"

Ten shook his head. He was tipsy, warm, and with friends. He could handle this.

As Doyoung and Jungwoo came near the porch, the smile slid right off Jungwoo's face. He nodded at Johnny and didn't even spare a glance at Ten, who he brushed by like he was trying to avoid a cobweb. Doyoung followed with the beer held in the crook of his arm. He was more courteous; he nodded and said hello to the both of them, but understandably, he didn't seem like he wanted to stay and chat. 

As the door closed behind them, Johnny said, "That was really weird." He took a long drink from the can in his hand and winced at the taste; it was probably warm by now. "Jungwoo's still mad at you?"

"I haven't talked to Doyoung since August, so I don't know why." 

Johnny gave him another look. "You don't? I'm pretty sure I know why." 

"Doyoung doesn't do that," Ten said in frustration. "He doesn't--" He caught himself before the words came out of his mouth but decided to speak anyway. "He doesn't talk about his feelings."

Johnny squinted. "I don't... think that's true. I know why you think that's true, but I don't think it's actually true."

Their talk was interrupted by Taeyong, who sat down heavily next to Johnny. From Johnny's other side, Ten could make out the dazed smile on Taeyong's face and tried not to laugh.

"Hey buddy," Johnny said. He pet Taeyong's shoulder soothingly. "How's it going in there?"

Taeyong shrugged. "Everyone's drunk. I'm drunk. Taeil is really drunk. I think Mark is drunk... who invited him? He only had one beer." He put an arm around Johnny's waist so that they were leaning against each other and hugging. "And Doyoung came!" 

"I saw," Ten said. His voice sounded drier than intended, and Johnny shot him a warning look.

"He never comes, but he came because I asked him to!" Taeyong drunk was really something. All the awkward sociability he carried in himself normally was gone, but it was replaced by an endearing shyness, a lovable quality, that was awkward for whoever he was talking to in its unexpectedness. This time of year his hair was silver. Watching him, Ten was struck by a deep affection, one he could tell was mirrored in Johnny. Taeyong had changed these past years; they all had. 

The door opened again and they were joined by Yuta, another person who, like Taeil, rarely showed up to anything anymore since graduation. When he saw Taeyong hanging on to Johnny, his face softened. He nodded at Ten and took a seat beside him; the beer in his hand dripped icy condensation onto Ten's leg through the hole in his jeans.

"How is he?" Yuta asked Ten in a low voice, gesturing with his head towards Taeyong. 

Ten laughed. In the same tone, he replied, "He's fine. He's talking a lot and getting really cuddly. He must have had a lot to drink."

Yuta shrugged. "He was drunk when I got here, but he still made me promise to come over and help him clean up tomorrow morning."

"Yeah, I haven't seen you around much lately, so neither has he. He probably just wants to see you, you know?" 

Yuta shrugged again and laughed. "I'm busy! Adult life, you know."

"Ah," Ten said. He spread his arms as much as he could. "I can't relate."

"I want to get my green card, so if I don't stay with this company as long as I can..."

Ten twisted his mouth. "Let's not talk about that!" he said with false cheer. 

Yuta laughed at him, but he complied easily enough and changed the subject. "I saw Doyoung in there with some new kid who looked really familiar. I didn't know he'd started coming to this stuff."

Ten hoped Yuta couldn't see how uncomfortable this topic made him. "His name is Jungwoo; you probably saw him around last year. I think Taeyong kinda bullied Doyoung into coming, so he brought a friend."

Yuta raised an eyebrow. "Are you saying we're not his friends?"

"I'm not saying anything like that because I haven't even talked to him. I'm just... speculating."

"I see," Yuta said. His sharp eyes searched Ten's face. "Can I make a... speculation, then?"

Ten wanted to say no, but he lifted a shoulder instead with a careful nonchalance.

"My... speculation--" Yuta rolled the word on his tongue with the diction of the slightly drunk--"is that he came because he wanted to see you, but he brought Jungwoo as protection."

Ten rolled his eyes. "Oh, not you too." 

"What do you mean, not me too?"

"Between you, Kun, Taeyong and Johnny..." Ten rubbed a hand over his face, realising as he did so that his hands were both cold and wet. He lifted a corner of his shirt and wiped his face off before continuing. "Taeyong said I was obsessed with him."

"Don't think I didn't hear about how you stayed at his place over the summer."

"He lives close to campus, which is close to where I work!"

"Right..." Yuta said. He sounded skeptical. "Back to my original point, which is that Doyoung probably wanted to see you. You know how he is."

"Yeah, we had a long talk about it," Ten muttered. Yuta didn't say anything, but the lift of his eyebrows registered surprise. In response to his unspoken question, Ten continued, "We fought a couple of times. There's no way he wants to see me right now. He definitely got bullied by Taeyong into coming. Also, I think Jungwoo doesn't like me, so that's why he brought him."

"As protection," Yuta said patiently. "This conversation is going in circles. You need to get your shit together. You're graduating sooner than you think, and something like this--you don't want to let it pass you without doing something about it."

"What do you mean, 'something like this'?" 

Yuta didn't say anything, just looked at him with his mouth set firmly. His handsome face was shadowed in unusual ways by the opposing lights of the porch and the street; he was only a year older than Ten, but he looked aged somehow, his strong features harsh and prominent. As he opened his mouth to reply, he was interrupted by the door opening and a flushed Jungwoo stumbling out.

"Taeyong--!" he said, only to stop himself when his eyes fell on Ten. The shift in his expression was so sudden and marked that Ten could feel the waves of hostility emanating off him; his face was so simultaneously kind and vacuous that any sort of malice almost looked like a bizarre mask, but it was there nonetheless.

Taeyong's grey head turned when he heard his name spoken. He raised his eyebrows.

"Lucas--" Jungwoo cut himself off and grimaced. "Well, I think you should see for yourself." He didn't have to say anything more; Taeyong had already stood up, teetering towards the door in anticipation of whatever horror this Lucas had probably gotten himself into. Johnny followed him, probably to do what he did best (clean up messy situations). 

With Johnny and Taeyong gone, it was only he, Yuta and Jungwoo left on the porch. The air between them was breathing, rolling in ways Ten couldn't understand. Yuta barely knew Jungwoo, but there was no way he had missed the animosity radiating from Jungwoo's sweet face. Ten was about to get up and go inside himself when the door opened, and Doyoung, red with the heat of a good party, stumbled out.

"There you are!" he said, patting Jungwoo's arm. He clearly hadn't noticed Yuta or Ten yet; when his eyes landed on them, he stiffened perceptibly. 

"You want to go back inside?" Jungwoo said. He put a proprietary hand on Doyoung's arm, shooting a glance at Ten as he did so. Ten couldn't quite read what the hell he thought he was doing, but he let it go. He was letting it go. 

Doyoung shrugged. His eyes were not on Ten, but on Yuta, who was staring right back. Doyoung looked away first. "Yes," he said to Jungwoo. "I was looking for you, so let's go."

As he disappeared behind the door, Yuta stood up. "I think it's time for me to go," he told Ten quietly.

"But you were barely here?"

"I told Taeyong I'd show up and say hi, but I can't stand these things anymore. I'm too old."

Ten rolled his eyes. "You're one year older than me."

Yuta shook his head. "I barely drank anyway, my car's down the street. You want a ride back to yours?"

Ten considered it for a moment, but: "No. I'll stay for a while longer. Plus I think Johnny's going to help Taeyong clean up, so I should stick around for that too."

Yuta shrugged. He stepped off the porch and waved at Ten, who waved back and watched his lone figure lope down the street, casting a long dark shadow as he went.

\--

Not that much later, he'd gone back inside and been swept up by Taeyong's newest and most bizarre acquisition, a freshman who had the deepest voice and most maniacal giggle of any six foot tall eighteen year old Ten had ever met. This was most likely the Lucas Jungwoo had been speaking of. He'd apparently managed to rocket two cans of Miller Lite across Taeyong's kitchen, leading to Jungwoo's panicked dash to get the neatest person in the house to clean it up. Now, the kitchen much cleaner, Ten was out in the backyard. He couldn't fully understand how he'd gotten out here, but Lucas had somehow gotten so drunk that Ten was only managing to hold him up through sheer will. They stumbled back into Taeyong's living room, and then into the kitchen, where Jungwoo was talking to Doyoung in a low voice. 

"Can someone--take him," Ten said, voice strained. Jungwoo took one look at them both and grabbed for Lucas, who draped himself over Jungwoo like a particularly clumsy plant. 

"It's time for him to go home, huh," Jungwoo said. The remark ought to have been addressed to Ten, but it wasn't--he was looking at Doyoung when he said it.

"Yes," Doyoung said. His own eyes were on Ten for a split second, and then he made determined eye contact with Jungwoo again. "But I need to talk to Taeyong, so--do you mind if I--"

"It's okay," Jungwoo said, patting him on the arm. "I can take Lucas back." From behind him, Lucas made a sleepy noise of assent. 

"Do you need help taking him out?" 

Jungwoo shook his head. "You can go find Taeyong. Just let me know when you leave here and when you get back to campus, okay?"

"The same goes for you," Doyoung said. Completely unexpectedly, he reached out and patted Ten's shoulder. "Let's go find Taeyong, then."

Ten, who had not been expecting to be acknowledged whatsoever in this conversation, jumped in surprise. He nodded, not trusting himself to say anything. As Jungwoo made his way out of the kitchen, his higher tone occasionally murmuring something in reply to Lucas' rumble, Doyoung and Ten walked down the hallway, past Jaehyun's room and into Taeyong's. Behind them the music was still playing in the living room, but there were very few people still left around. It was very late, much later than Doyoung ever stayed out, and Ten wanted to ask him why. He held his tongue instead.

When they reached Taeyong's room, the door was closed; Doyoung's pale hand hesitated over the doorknob for a moment before he pushed it open. Inside, Jaehyun, Johnny and Taeyong were passing around a joint. Ten could see Doyoung's nose crinkle at the smell of weed.

"Are you going?" Taeyong said. He was curled up in an enormous armchair by his window. Ten didn't think he'd ever seen Taeyong cross-faded before, but given Taeyong's general personality, sometimes it could be hard to tell. To his right, Jaehyun and Johnny were sitting cross legged on the bed, for some reason covered in blankets. Johnny waved at both of them; Jaehyun just nodded in acknowledgement. 

"I thought I'd help you clean up, if you wanted," Doyoung said. "Just some basic, like, getting cans and stuff. Almost everyone is gone."

Taeyong closed his eyes in relief. "Oh, that's great," he said. "But I don't want to clean up right now, and Yuta is coming tomorrow morning anyway. You can just go if you want."

Doyoung hesitated. "I don't want to leave without helping you with this somehow," he insisted. 

"The trash bags are under the kitchen sink," Jaehyun said. "But you really don't need to do anything." 

"Thanks," Doyoung said. He closed the door gingerly, leaving himself and Ten out in the hallway by themselves. "I'm going to go do some basic cleanup," he said to Ten. "Are you going back to campus?"

"Ah..." He had no clue. "I'll...help you?" From Doyoung's face, he couldn't whether Ten was asking him or telling him. Ten had no idea himself. "I'll help you," he repeated with more determination. Doyoung's expression didn't change; instead, he started down the hall again, heading with that long purposeful stride toward the kitchen. 

The fluorescent light seemed harsh now after the cool darkness of the hallway and Taeyong's bedroom, but under it Ten could appreciate Doyoung's bizarre outfit. It felt almost wrong to see him in a t-shirt and jeans; as someone who was terminally incapable of looking casual, even his casual outfits looked like he was wearing a costume somehow. Ten didn't remark on it. Instead, as Doyoung tossed him a trash bag, he observed the wide line of Doyoung's shoulders as they walked into the living room, which was dark, lit only by Jaehyung's Christmas lights and Taeyong's absurd red lava lamps. 

They worked in silence for the most part, picking up red cups or walking back to the kitchen to pour out half full beer cans. By this time even the last stragglers had left, so they were the only two in that dimly lit room. Occasionally Doyoung would break the silence with a snarky comment about someone's drinking habits. Ten, afraid of saying something else he couldn't take back, only laughed in reply. When the room looked marginally better than when they had began, they moved on to the kitchen, which was somehow in both worse and better shape. There was much more party debris in it, most likely from the game of beer pong people had been playing on the dining table, but Lucas' accident earlier in the night meant Taeyong had come in and wiped down the cabinets and swept part of the floor. 

The kitchen was also much brighter. From here, as they brushed by each other to put beer cans in the recycling and empty bottles out in the sink, Ten thought the dark circles under Doyoung's eyes were much worse. He wanted to ask Doyoung if he was sleeping well, but it would be presumptuous--it would be too much. Again, as he had so many times that night, he held his tongue.

As they were nearing the end, Doyoung's phone chimed. "Jungwoo said he got back to campus safely," he said, looking at what was presumably a text from Jungwoo. "And Lucas' roommate is in the room, so he's okay too."

"Lucas is..." Ten said, letting the sentence trail off. He didn't quite know what to say about him.

"He is a lot." Doyoung smiled--not one of his normal smiles, the ones that were so huge they could barely fit his face. This one was smaller, more fond. "He's a lot, but he's fun, isn't he?"

"This was the first time I met him," Ten admitted. "He's really... heavy."

At that Doyoung laughed. Ten felt a faint sense of triumph; it had been a long time since he'd made Doyoung laugh. There had been a point where hearing that laugh had been a goal of his, an aim he strove to accomplish regularly. That longing, the ache in his body, the stiffness of unused muscle, all returned to him hearing it. Wondering if it showed on his face, he turned away. Doyoung didn't seem to notice; he was still smiling to himself over some memory of Lucas. 

"Jungwoo is also... interesting," Ten said. Should he have brought this topic up? But it was too late.

Doyoung's smile grew more fond. "He's a good kid," he said, nodding. "Something about him makes me want to take care of him."

You feel that way about everyone, Ten thought but didn't say. Instead he asked, "How did you two meet?"

"He was one of Kun's residents, I think," Doyoung said. He paused with an empty can in his hand and a faraway look on his face. "He's... easy to love, I guess."

"Are you two, uh..." Ten didn't know how to phrase it. "Dating?"

"No," Doyoung said. He didn't sound angry, just taken aback. "He's not really... I don't think I could be like that with him. I just want to take care of him, that's all."

Ten didn't reply. As he wiped down the dining table, he thought about that relationship. Doyoung wanted to take care of people; it was in his nature. He and Doyoung had clashed over it sometimes because Ten was so self-contained, self-sufficient. 

Doyoung broke the silence again. "Can I ask you something?" At Ten's nod, he continued, "Why did you ask me that? If Jungwoo and I were together?"

"You seem really close," Ten said. He chose his next words with care. "I think it can be hard for people to... get close to you. And I know him from other places, but I didn't realise the two of you were that close, even though all three of us have a lot of the same friends. And..." He hesitated, but it was so late and he was so tired that he ended up just saying it. "Also, I don't think he likes me."

Rather than protesting, Doyoung bit his lip in thought for a moment. Then he said, "He doesn't." Ten raised his eyebrows; Doyoung's answering laugh was strained, the awkward guffaw that erupted from him whenever he was nervous. "It's not because I said anything to him! I think you guys share a class? He just decided it on his own. You two are really similar, so maybe that's why. You repel each other, like magnets." But if he and Jungwoo were magnets of the same pole, then that made Doyoung their opposite, which meant Ten's attraction to Doyoung was...

Ten shook off the magnet metaphor. "I was just wondering. He kind of gives off mean vibes when he sees me." 

By this time they were finished cleaning the kitchen. Doyoung stood by the sink, tying off a trash bag, and Ten was rubbing the same spot on the dining table over and over again while he thought. It was probably almost four in the morning by now, Ten thought; there was no way Johnny wasn't asleep. He'd probably been planning to spend the night at Taeyong's in the first place.

"Do you have a way to get home?" Doyoung said abruptly. Ten, who hadn't been expecting it, jumped a little; he didn't take well to being startled. 

"No..." he said, drawing it out. "I'll probably walk. My place isn't that far from here."

"I'll walk back with you, then. I didn't drive here tonight." He must have seen the curiosity on Ten's face because he added, "Jungwoo's original plan was to get me extremely drunk, I think. But then Lucas happened, and..." He waved a hand.

After they'd finished the last of their basic cleaning, which had ended up not being so basic, they exited the house. Doyoung for whatever reason had a spare key, which he used to lock up with a quiet click. "I've been designated as the person to check up on Taeyong and make sure he's eating when Jaehyun is out on breaks," he said in response to a question Ten didn't ask. 

They started off down the street, and Ten was reminded very sharply of the last time they'd been in this situation. But the feeling was different; it was so late at night that night was right on the cusp of turning morning. The sky wasn't quite light, but it wasn't the pitch black of midnight, either, and the streetlights on the street where Jaehyun and Taeyong lived were white LED lights, not the sick orange of the ones near campus. Doyoung had his phone out; he was presumably texting Jungwoo that he'd left Taeyong's place. 

"You're so responsible," Ten said. He meant it as a fact and even a compliment, but like a lot of the other things that came out of his mouth, it ended up almost mocking. Doyoung cast a wary glance over at him but seemed to decide that Ten was most likely being as sincere as he was capable.

"I think it's just important to keep up with your obligations to other people," he replied; then he shrank into himself, a curious move from a man in motion. Ten pretended not to notice how he'd echoed what he'd said in the coffee shop that evening long past. It was most likely unintentional, anyway. For all his awareness, Doyoung didn't have a heart for malice. 

The thought brought him back to that night in the summer, when he'd been drunk enough to make a move into Doyoung's bed. What had he been wanting then? Beyond the impulses of his body, beyond the sense-memory of Doyoung's pale hands on him, what had pushed him? Caught in a reverie as he was, he almost tripped over a crack in the sidewalk; it was only Doyoung's hands on him, cold even through Ten's sweatshirt, that saved him from tumbling entirely. 

"Ah--thanks," he said, shaken. Doyoung didn't say anything; the curve of his mouth in this light could only have been interpreted as a smile except for how soft it was. Doyoung was capable of tenderness, but not like this, and not towards Ten: and yet the delicate glance he sent Ten's way couldn't be read as anything else. 

If his heart was thawing--well, so was Ten's. He felt nineteen again, giddy with infatuation. The sleep deprivation, the faint suggestion of alcohol, the way the streetlights lit the tips of Doyoung's hair in silver--it was all too familiar.

As they kept going he schemed of ways to break this intimacy, which in its ease was too dangerous to him. Neither of them had brought it up, but it had reappeared nonetheless, powered only by sentimentality and what Ten could only conceive of as desire. As they approached campus, seized by desperation and with no idea of what could come out of his mouth, he grabbed Doyoung's arm. Those big dark eyes turned to him, wide with surprise.

"Listen," Ten said. He felt reckless, imprudent. Yuta's words were echoing in his head. "I have something to say."

Doyoung's eyes widened even more. "Be my guest." It was both inviting and dry, a level of complexity he hadn't known Doyoung could achieve.

"You were right." The words, which he had thought would be more difficult to voice, were more a declaration than a confession or even an apology. "Doyoung." He almost laughed saying Doyoung's name. "You were right. I owe you an apology. I still think it's--no, don't say anything!" he said when he saw Doyoung begin to open his mouth. "Let me finish. You still overreacted to our breakup. But I owed you an apology then, so I guess I owe you one now. I said a lot of horrible stuff to you this year, but even before that, when I broke up with you, I shouldn't have done it like that. I didn't break up with you because of you... Not entirely, anyway. I wasn't--" The words were dificult to force out of his mouth. "I wasn't ready for that level of seriousness or responsibility in a relationship. You called me a coward... I guess that was true. And I still think you overreacted a little, but I know you enough to get why you did it. I..." By this time, he'd run out of steam. His face was so hot he could feel his cheeks burning against the cold air. Rather than looking upset, something had shuttered behind Doyoung's gaze; his face was completely blank.

After they stood for a moment with Ten's words hanging between them, Doyoung said, "I wasn't really expecting that." Again, that blankness. "I don't know what to say in response." He stared at Ten; those wide eyes made him look very young and innocent for a brief second. Then he closed himself off again. "See you around," he said finally. For one more time that year, Ten found himself on his own with Doyoung moving away from him at a steady pace. He should have expected it, and he had to some extent--only to the extent that if he thought about it, he understood the response. The issue was that he had not thought out what he himself had said at all, and reflecting on it now made him so embarrassed and lightheaded he crouched down in a squat with his cold hands pressed to his burning face. After resting like that long enough that his toes started to feel like they were freezing off, he stumbled his way up and back to the house. The first fingers of dawn were barely touching the horizon when he tumbled into bed and slept for the next full day.

\--

The senior showcase was coming up, so Ten shouldn't have had much time to think about it. The problem was that ever since that night, he'd seen Doyoung much more than was usual or normal. They ran into each other in the student cafeteria sometimes, Doyoung always with those big startled bunny eyes and Ten with an expression that he wished was much more composed than it probably was in reality. Or they found themselves in the same building waiting for friends to come out from large classes. Sometimes Ten went to the dorm where Kun was an RA and saw Doyoung laughing with Jungwoo in the stairwell.

"It's Dunning-Kruger!" Johnny said, in the tone he only used when he was pretending to be Ten's wise older brother figure. "You only think you're seeing him more now, but actually you're just noticing him more."

"I don't think it's that at all..." Ten and Doyoung weren't really capable of ignoring each other's presences like that. Had his youthful misstep really forced Doyoung inside to the point that getting the apology had let him be more comfortable on campus? 

When he floated this theory to Taeyong, even that veritable fount of social ineptitude shook his grey head. "Isn't that kind of self-centered?" he asked, tilting to one side as he stretched. "I think Doyoung's just making more friends he likes enough to come outside for."

Ten didn't quite know what to say to that. "You don't count yourself as one?"

Taeyong's eyebrows pulled together in thought. "Maybe," he said. "But I graduated. Most of his friends did, and you were still close enough with Kun that it must not have seemed worth it to him to fully pursue that. With these freshmen, they're not so connected to you or to that whole thing, maybe? And it's part of his personality to take care of people."

Indeed, the more he saw Doyoung the more Ten realised Taeyong was right. Much of the time when he saw Doyoung it was in combination with someone else, usually an underclassman, most often Jungwoo. One time, very memorably, it had been Lucas, who somehow managed to remember Ten from the night at Jaehyun and Taeyong's and practically ran over to greet him, a resigned Doyoung following behind. 

Nonetheless. It was bizarre, but good, to see Doyoung outside on campus. Sometimes they even managed to make conversation although they were stuck in that inconvenient place of both knowing that they were thinking about that night of the party and Doyoung's abrupt departure. Ten himself was in some sort of limbo with Doyoung now, he supposed, where for once he was on the receiving end of an unequal dynamic. If he thought about it that way, it wasn't the worst thing in the world. 

Anyway, he had other things on his mind. Like the showcase, which, being placed at the end of November, was approaching much more quickly than he could handle. Everything was on time, he thought; everything was on track. The showcase itself wasn't the problem; the problem was what came after it. The next semester, graduation, and all the attendant anxieties weighed on him to the point that he couldn't even catch up on his sorely necessary sleep. 

What he needed least of all, then, was to run into Doyoung at the student cafeteria just as he slipped and dropped his entire lunch face down onto the floor.

The two of them stood and looked at it for a moment. It had been a salad bowl, and it had very neatly fallen so that almost nothing had spilled. Nonetheless, Ten wasn't yet at the level where he was ready to eat leaves that had so recently touched the ground. 

"Well," he said, taking a deep breath and trying to sound cheerful about it as he knelt down to begin cleaning it up. "I guess that's it for me!"

Doyoung, on his right, using napkins to mop up the dressing, said, "Was that your lunch?"

"Yes," Ten said, using all of his restraint not to add "Obviously..." after it.

Doyoung pursed his lips and stood up. "I'll get you something, then," he said, and strode off before Ten could say anything. When he came back, he was holding the same salad bowl Ten always ordered. Of course he was--Ten was a fairly picky eater, and he'd had the same order since his first semester on campus. 

"Uh..." He stared at Doyoung for a moment. "You really didn't have to do that." He stood up, not without a wince, and together they walked over to a trash can so that Ten could throw away the old bowl and the dirty napkins in his hand. Doyoung started almost immediately towards the seating area; Ten followed him almost unconsciously in pursuit of the food.

"I have the dining dollars," Doyoung said dismissively. "It's not a problem. I always have too many left at the end of the semester, so I just use them on other people when I can." Ten knew it couldn't have been as simple as that; Doyoung had a car, but he didn't have easy access to a kitchen, so there was no way he was able to save that much of the school dining currency. He just couldn't cook that much. But the salad had already been bought, so Ten shut his mouth (metaphorically) and started shoveling it in.

After a few moments where they were eating and attempting not to make eye contact, Doyoung started, "So... how have you been? Lately?" Ten was about to lie through his teeth when Doyoung said, "How are your pieces for the winter showcase coming along? Kun says you've been really distracted lately." The tips of his ears turned red when he realised how it sounded. "I mean--! I didn't ask about you. He just mentioned it because usually you two hang out a lot, and I also see him a lot, so the topic comes up, and..." He trailed off, looking mortified.

Ten muffled a laugh behind his hands, but he couldn't keep a grin from spreading across his face. "It's fine," he said after managing to get himself under control. "It's been going fine for me." He didn't really know what was coming out of his mouth; despite what Doyoung said, there was no way that he hadn't asked Kun, which meant he'd been thinking about the showcase and about Ten, specifically, in the showcase. Then he shook himself: "No, wait. They aren't going fine. Everyone is an idiot."

Doyoung, who hadn't been expecting such a response, choked on the rice in his mouth and began to cough until he gulped down some water. "Are they actually, or just compared to you?"

"They are actually idiots. But I'm also doing a solo piece, so maybe I'm the idiot." He could feel himself falling into flirtation again, smiling and playful; unlike over the summer, he wasn't sure he wanted to stop it. What was some harmless flirtation with an ex? He hadn't hooked up with anyone in ages. He didn't want to, either, but some attention was always nice.

This train of thought was interrupted by Doyoung clearing his throat and looking away. Ten shook himself. Flirtation with anyone else would have been fine; with Doyoung, who took everything to heart, it wasn't the best idea. 

But then Doyoung laughed. He looked at Ten through his eyelashes and said, "You probably are." Ten thought maybe his heart had stopped for a moment; this pattern felt so familiar and yet so fresh. If he was being encouraged...

"You know people in the showcase, right," he said, leaning forward. "It's just in a few weeks. Are you going to come?"

Doyoung, ever a master of awkward body language, mirrored Ten by leaning back rather than forward. Ten wasn't fazed; Doyoung had his own tells, and the way he was looking at Ten right now was one of them. "I guess," Doyoung said with a nervous laugh. "I don't really know that many people in the fine arts anymore though, let alone dancers in the showcase."

"I'll get you a free ticket. I'll leave it at the box office," Ten promised. "If I don't see you between now and then... You need to come." He wasn't sure why he was so insistent on this except that it felt instinctual, it felt right in a way a lot of other things didn't lately. 

Doyoung looked to the side, his silhouette outlined by the bright sun behind him. "Maybe," he said, subdued.

But Ten thought: I have him.

\--

As it turned out, he did not have him.

The showcase came and went; with it, so did Ten's sanity. Sat on the couch, his entire body still thrumming with adrenaline, he wasn't sure it would return. The past week or two had been so fraught with anxiety and overplanning and a general frenetic energy that even on Sunday night, a full 24 hours after the showcase had finished, he was keyed up and had nothing to do with it.

"Go sleep," Johnny suggested after the twelfth time Ten complained that he was bored. "You really need it."

"I can't," Ten said. He could hear the unflattering whine in his voice, but he couldn't have stopped it if he tried. His life just felt empty and unplanned without the regular rehearsals to look forward to, although now that he thought about it finals were in just a few weeks. The blankness was unnerving to him.

Johnny laughed at him. "Don't you have anyone else to go bother? I really have to finish this essay."

"I don't want to see any of them!" He'd seen enough of everyone he knew in the past few weeks. Everyone except for Doyoung, who after their conversation in the cafeteria had completely disappeared off the face of the earth. Ten had left a ticket at the box office like he'd promised, but he hadn't seen Doyoung in the audience. Ten had better things to focus on, so he wasn't disappointed, exactly. It was just that he had been expecting everyone there, and everyone had included Doyoung. But last night no one, not even Kun, had brought him up, so Ten didn't either. And after the show, during the cast party, he'd not thought about Doyoung at all--naturally, since it was hard to think about your ex when your friends were doing ill-advised body shots off each other. 

But now. It was almost December, and the end of the showcase meant the beginning of a lot of stuff Ten wasn't ready to handle. He was avoidant by nature, and he was good at it; December meant he could no longer put off thinking about graduation more seriously. And there was the matter of his parents coming to visit, and the eventual visa situation... He rubbed his face hard, and Johnny patted his head in sympathy.

"Go sleep," he said again. "I'll take you out to brunch tomorrow, one of my classes got cancelled."

As Ten, wrapped in a blanket, prepared to stand up in a way that maximised his warmth and minimised movement, their doorbell rang. "I didn't know you ordered delivery," Ten said accusingly.

"I didn't..." If it hadn't been Johnny, it was most likely one of their neighbours coming to complain about the lawn, which they had no control over anyway. Ten was already standing up, and he was much better at getting rid of people than Johnny, so with only a faint complaint he made his way over to the door and opened it, only to find... Doyoung, cheeks flushed, with a bag of takeout in his hand.

"Are you busy?" he asked. 

Ten stared at him, mouth hanging open in amazement. A long second passed where no sounds came out of him; then, remembering his manners, he shuffled aside and let Doyoung in.

Seated at the table, he looked as natural as he could in Ten and Johnny's chaotic house. Johnny, seeing the two of them, had disappeared almost immediately into his own room, probably thinking that he didn't want to get involved in whatever was happening; Ten couldn't blame him.

Instead of sitting out in the living room, where Ten and Johnny usually ate meals, they went into Ten's room. It wasn't so messy as the outside--Johnny was the main source of their clutter--but it was not well kept. His exhaustion from the showcase took visual form here; his bed was unmade, the sheets soft in a way that indicated they hadn't been washed for slightly too long. There were probably three or four different mugs on his desk. The blinds were very dusty. The overhead light seemed too bright, but switching it off and turning on his bedside lamp would have been too intimate. 

Doyoung stood for a moment after he entered, swinging the bag in his hand from side to side in a way that could not have been good for the food. He crossed the room over to the chair by Ten's desk and sat down in it, with such a stiffness Ten was surprised his legs bent at all. 

"This is weird," Doyoung said. He wasn't looking at Ten; instead he had placed the bag of food on the desk and was using those long fingers to unravel the knot holding it together. "Sorry."

"It's..." _fine_ , Ten wanted to say, but he wasn't sure if it was fine. He had no clue why he'd invited Doyoung in except that something else in him had taken over when he'd seen Doyoung on the porch, skin pale and hair limp. It was a Sunday night, for god's sake. 

"I wanted to see you, but I didn't want to come over without anything..." Doyoung hesitated. "And I knew you would be busy because of the showcase, so I thought today would..." 

Ten's heart, which had seized at hearing the words "I wanted to see you," started again. "So you remembered it?"

This time Doyoung looked at him, his eyes rounded in surprise. "Of course," he said. "I saw you. But you seemed busy afterward, so I let you go with your friends. I didn't think you'd want to see me."

"I didn't see you at all. I... thought..." The words wouldn't come out; it felt shameful, difficult to admit that he'd wanted to see Doyoung there, that he'd expected his presence and had been crushed by his absence. 

Doyoung's face softened. "But you left a ticket for me. Of course I came." Of course he had. Doyoung was like this, Ten remembered: he always showed up. Without understanding it, he almost felt close to tears. Doyoung must have seen it on his face; he started forward, but then he held himself back. That instinct was in him, to care for others. Even in such an unromantic setting as this, wrapped in an old blanket with all the exhaustion of the past weeks held in his body, Ten could feel that yearning, that longing ache return. The things he wanted... But it was dangerous to desire, now.

"I didn't see you," he managed to force out. "So I thought you didn't come. Did you enjoy it?"

"Of course." This tenderness looked wrong on Doyoung. In the past, it had always been Ten who'd been tender, and always in the most unexpected moments. Sometimes he had surprised himself with his capacity to be delicate, to treat Doyoung with gentleness, to talk him down from his anxieties. Now, even without anything happening, he felt the roles reversing on him. 

Then Doyoung said: "But I wanted to talk to you..." 

He let the sentence fall into the air between them. Ten didn't want to hear what he might have to say; still, he responded: "What's up, then?"

Doyoung, who had given up on the bag, turned fully to face Ten. They were opposite each other, mirror images--Ten, on the unmade bed, wrapped in a dark blanket, with bags under his eyes, and Doyoung, sitting as properly as he always did, back straight and legs crossed.

"I don't know how to say this," Doyoung began. "I thought maybe it would be better to do it on your terms, so I came to your place." He studied his hands instead of making eye contact. "I--lately, I..." Words seemed to fail him, and his cheeks were turning red. Just as Ten was about to prompt another response, he gathered himself. "Maybe I've been reading this wrong," he said plainly. "But I don't--" his eyes darted about the room--"I can't tell if it's right or not."

"If what is right?" burst out Ten, whose entire body felt tensed, ready for what he thought would be an attack.

Instead of answering, Doyoung pushed his face into his palms. "This wasn't it," he said, voice muffled. "I'll go. You can keep the food."

"No!" The response cracked out of him before he could stop it. Whatever tension was between them, it had to be cleared now. "What are you saying? Are you..." He stopped as what Doyoung might have been trying to say hit him. The idea was beyond absurd, but the delivery, the setting, this confusing setup: considering Doyoung's personality, it really could only have been about one thing. The force of the realisation slammed into him like a blast of wind. 

Doyoung couldn't make eye contact. "You figured it out?" he asked his own hands. "This was really stupid. Don't laugh at me, though. It was an impulse." They were familiar enough with each other that Ten read the intention behind those last words. It was true: Doyoung was hotheaded, easy to anger, quick to be roused to temper, but he wasn't impulsive, not when it came to Ten. He'd managed to leech that instinct out long ago. So if he'd come here on impulse, it meant something. It had to have meant something.

Ten knew what Doyoung was saying even when Doyoung couldn't open his mouth to say it. He was frozen in place, paralysed by the need to respond correctly. If he had the chance to change this, if he had the chance to fuck it up again, this time on Doyoung's terms...

He could see Doyoung's legs shift in his eyeline, as if to get up, and that spurred him into action. He swung his own legs off the bed, which left him standing in front of Doyoung, hands and arms still wrapped in this enormous blanket. The light was really unflattering; he could see all of the faint lines on Doyoung's face, the thin, grey skin under his eyes, the spot beginning to form on his chin. It was, as he had thought before, the worst possible time for this to happen. A lot of the other parts of their relationship had happened like a movie, both the positive and the negative. Ten had waited, or wanted, for an atmosphere to feel right. He'd needed support from something outside himself to take action. Now there was nothing outside himself: only he and Doyoung, standing in the same room, right in front of each other. 

But as always, in his foolhardy, generous, wide-open bravery, it was Doyoung who took the first step. He couldn't reach Ten's hands under the blanket, so he grabbed one of its corners instead. It didn't seem like it was meant to be comforting; rather, it seemed that he was holding on to it for support. 

"Are you going to make me say it?" Doyoung whispered.

Ten looked at him and shed the blanket. He grabbed Doyoung's hands so that they were linked like children on the playground. No matter how foolish it made him feel, he thought Doyoung, who was most grounded by other people, deserved that. In reply to Doyoung's question, he shook his head. "I need you to... tell me what you're asking for," he said slowly. "I don't want to misinterpret."

Doyoung's expression pinched together, but he responded: "I still have feelings for you." It took him a long time to say it, and he was red by the end. If Ten weren't holding his hands, he probably would have covered his face.

Ten had known, but hearing the sentiment made it a solid presence in the room. It felt different. "Me too. I think. For you, I mean."

"Well," Doyoung said. "That's good." He seemed like he was waiting for Ten to say something more, but for once Ten wanted to be silent. He was studying Doyoung's pale features, which were at once very familiar and completely new to him every time. After a moment Doyoung said, "So what now?" 

Ten shrugged. "Whatever you want."

"But all of the..." Doyoung's hands twitched in Ten's grasp. Ten knew what he was referring to: graduating, visas, parents, actually having to date and see if it worked out this time, the ordeal of telling their friends. 

"It's fine," Ten said. He didn't know if it would be, but he knew Doyoung needed to hear it. "We'll be fine." He swung their linked hands, and Doyoung looked down as if he'd never seen Ten's limbs before. 

"But what do we do now, then?" Doyoung asked, a plaintive note tinging his voice. He seemed confused, like he hadn't expected all of this to work out the way it had. Ten himself had no clue why he was being so calm about this, especially when it was likely that Doyoung was panicking underneath that confused exterior. It was just that for the first time in a long time, he felt grounded. Doyoung's warm hands in his were tethering him; he knew what he wanted now.

"Now?" Ten said. He looked around the room and his gaze landed on the takeout on his desk behind Doyoung. "You brought food, right?"

"It's probably cold..."

"So we can warm it up and eat." He let go of one of Doyoung's hands, but when he kept holding on with the other he could see a light go on in Doyoung's eyes. The way he was looking at Ten felt comfortable, intimate, familiar. 

Instead of saying anything, Doyoung smiled, one of the enormous ones, the ones that were so big that he couldn't control the way they filled his entire face. Ten could feel himself smiling in return. 

With his free hand, he grabbed the takeout. Still holding hands, they walked outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: im not going to add any more chapters  
> also me: splits the last "chapter" into two because it felt wrong otherwise
> 
> ANYWAY... i can't believe this monster is done... it is officially the longest thing i have EVER written and that is terrifying. come talk to me ab nct on my [twt](https://twitter.com/_monopolizers) or [cc](https://curiouscat.me/monopolizers) or [tumblr](http://hotgaydumbledore.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> thank u everyone for reading :* hope u enjoyed it :)


End file.
